- If you've ever set up a microphone only to find that the audio
level is just a bit too low, it can be incredibly frustrating.😫 Sometimes even great
microphones need a little help, so let's see how you can use a boost to get the moot out of your microphone. (intro music to boost your mood) In the whole wide wacky
world of microphone boosters and signal amplifiers it can sometimes feel
a little overwhelming. So today let's talk about what the differences
are between them, when you might need one,
when you might NOT need one, and some good recommendations for reliable and affordable boosters. So let's start off by talking about what the heck is
a microphone booster or a signal amplifier?! It's usually some type of little device that goes into your signal chain between your microphone and
your interface, your mixer, whatever you're connecting it to. And what the signal booster
does, believe it or not, is boosts the signal.
(shocked gasps) And there are many
different kinds of these, but they pretty much all
run on phantom power, which every mixer and interface has. You connect to these to
that, turn on phantom power and then this is going
to amplify the signal coming from your microphone. And so, not only does a booster go beyond what your mixer can do natively, but it also introduces
what's called "clean gain." Some mixers do have a lot
of gain built into them like the Zoom P8 that I
reviewed a few months ago, it has like 76 decibels
of gain, which is awesome. That means it can even
run a quiet microphone like the Shure SM7B without a booster and you can get a proper level. However, it wasn't
necessarily the cleanest gain. So the next question naturally would be when do you
need a signal booster? And the answer, hopefully, is that you DON'T need one, because why spend more money on something and add something else to your
setup if you don't need to? If you're using a condenser microphone, like the one I'm using right now, which is the Earthworks Icon– and because this is the most
popular question I get asked, reporterstore.com 👍 is where you can get
these colored windscreens. I'm not associated with them, I have no affiliate links for them, they don't know who I am or that I exist,
(tears) but that's where you can get these. This is the SM7B Windscreen, and it fits the Earthworks
Icon pretty well as well. So if you want all kinds of colors of your pop filters and windscreens, go to reporterstore.com because that is... No matter what the video is about, that's going to be the most
popular question that I get. But this is a condenser microphone. And if you're using a condenser, what that means is it's running
off of phantom power itself. And because of that, condenser microphones usually have really high signal outputs, which means you're getting
enough level right off the bat and you don't need to worry about it. Dynamic microphones, on the other hand, things like the PodMic, the SM7B, the MV7, dynamic microphones like those are usually the ones
that need a signal boost. But there are so many variables that go into whether or not
you need a signal booster. Things like the type of
microphone you're using, the interface or the mixer
you're sending it into, the level that you speak
at when you're recording, the environment that you're recording in. So it's hard to say, yes,
you need one for sure, or no, you don't. But speaking of needing one for sure, if you're using the Shure SM7B, you probably just need a signal booster.
(seriously, just get one) That is a legendary microphone, the sound quality is amazing, but it's also a legendarily
quiet microphone. So to really make it shine, like the way that you probably wanted it to when you bought it, you probably need a signal booster for it, unless you just speak super
loud and authoritatively because you used to be like
a bootcamp drill instructor or something. So my recommendation is to
always get your setup going and then see if it works for you. And if everything sounds good, then don't worry about any of this. Save yourself the money and
the time and the effort, and don't worry about it. But if you've connected everything, and you're still finding that the levels just aren't as loud as
you need them to be, then that's where you need a booster. And if you're wondering whether
or not you can use a booster with a condenser microphone,
the answer is generally no, because these run on phantom power and condenser microphones
run on phantom power. So, if this is in your signal chain getting the phantom power, it's not going to also
then be sending power to the microphone, so your condenser won't even be turned on. Now, there are a few very kind of limited and hard to find models of signal boosters that do have phantom pass through power for condenser microphones. I have no idea why you
would need to use that, but it does exist. I've never used it, I've never needed it, you probably don't need it. If you know you need that,
you know you need it. If you're wondering whether
or not you do, you don't. (laughs in absurdity) So, don't worry about it. I have the Cloudlifter and the FetHead, which are probably two
of the most popular ones that have been around
for a really long time. And then I've also got the Coda MB-Stealth and the Klark Teknik CT 1. I paid for all of these
myself at full price, except for the Coda Stealth, this one was sent to me
like eight months ago. There were a lot of other ones out there, but these were just the
ones that I happen to have and I think they can at least
give you a good baseline of what might or might not work for you and then you can make your
ultimate decision from there. I'm also filming this video
with an anamorphic lens for no reason other than funsies. And I'm trying to be
sparing with how much I move and let the lens flares come
in and out, but it's fun. Anyway.. We'll just
go through each of these and talk about the pros and the cons. This is the Cloudlifter CL-2. The reason it's called the "2," is because there are TWO connections,🤯 so you can run two
microphones through this. The regular Cloudlifter, the
CL-1 looks exactly like this if you just broke it in
half like a Kit-Kat bar. But this is two because it's
actually cheaper to buy this than to have the individual ones, and I needed two at the
time that I bought this. The manufacturer's suggested retail price, the MSRP for the CL-2
for this one is $299, the MSRP for the single
channel one is $179. This came out in 2011, so it's been around for
over a decade at this point. These are known, trusted, reliable, it's built really well,
it's just a metal thing. I really love the design of this. And if you care about where
your stuff is manufactured, this is made in the good ol' U.S. of A. And the way that you
would use the Cloudlifter is you just run your microphone into it, and then you use another XLR cable. Typically, usually it's a
short patch cable like this, that then goes into your
mixer or your interface. And that way, this can just sort of hang
out right next to that and be connected to it. You don't have to use a short cable, you can use a longer cable and
position this somewhere else, wherever you need it. But you are gonna have this box that's kind of hanging around
somewhere in your setup. And just so you can see the difference, let's do some sound test comparisons. So I think the SM7B is going
to be the best microphone to test this out with, since the difference will be so drastic. And now, I'm gonna
switch over to the SM7B, which has a plus 35 on the gain. That's kind of where I normally
keep my dynamic microphones. And its fader is at the unity mark, a little higher than this one. So this is the Earthworks, and now this is the SM7B. So it is a lot quieter. I can bump up this channel
fader all the way to the top. I'm just gonna connect the SM7B's cable into the Cloudlifter, and then I will use one
of these small cables to go into the RODECaster. Turn on phantom power. And now, with the same
settings as we used before, this is the Icon and this is the SM7B. So it is significantly louder. I still have the fader at about... Like a little above halfway, kind of right at the
unity mark, as they say, and the gain is set to plus 35. The Cloudlifter adds 25
decibels of clean gain to your mixer. And now, you can kind of start
to hear the SM7B sounding like it should sound. It's a great, rich,
full sounding microphone and that's what it sounds like now. And since I mentioned the gain and volume, you might be wondering
what the difference is, and the best way that I've
heard it explained to me (thanks Chris!) is that gain is like the water main that goes to your house or to a house, and volume is like a faucet. Meaning that to get water into your house, there's a big water main outside that has just a ton of water running through it all the time. But instead of using all the
water possible at all times, you use your faucet to
adjust exactly how much water you want to come out at a given time. On your mixer, you can set the gain level and that's gonna be the maximum signal that's coming from the
microphone at all times and then you can use the volume fader, if your mixer has one, to then adjust exactly
how much of that signal you wanna put into the
recording or the final output. If you're using something
like the Scarlett 2i2, you can adjust the gain and
then you would adjust the volume on whatever software application
you're recording into. So let's jump back over to the Earthworks and talk about our next entry
into the booster category, which is the Triton FetHead. So the FetHead was released in 2018, it adds 27 decibels of
clean gain to your signal and the MSRP is $92 for the FetHead, and it's made in Holland,
so "Holla-and...stuff." Now, this works exactly the
same as the Cloudlifter. You plug it in, you connect phantom power, but there's one big difference, which is you don't necessarily
have to use a patch cable like this. You could, if you wanted
to connect this directly to the back of your microphone
and then run a cable to your mixer, or you can do what I like to do, which is just connect this directly to the back of the RODECaster, and then run a cable from
the microphone to here. If that doesn't work for you, of course, you could connect a cable to it and run it through your
line somewhere that way. But I like connecting this just directly to the back of the mixer. If you have a mixer or an
interface that has the connections at the top and you connect this there, sometimes it can be difficult
to fit multiple FetHead next to each other, just depending on the
design of your interface, but at least you always have
a workaround with the ability to just use a cable. So, I actually do prefer this design. This is the SM7B running
into the RODECaster Pro at gain set to 35 and
fader at the unity mark. And now without me changing anything, this is the SM7B running
through the FetHead. I actually need to turn the
fader down just a little bit, because we were clipping. So I know that this says it only adds one or two more decibels of clean gain, but it really feels like it
makes a much bigger impact than the Cloudlifter does. That could just be my
very scientific setting that I have this all happening in, but you know, hear for
yourself the difference. I can actually turn the
gain level down to 25 and then boost up the channel's volume, which should help give
me even a cleaner signal because the less gain that you're using in your mixer interface, the less noise you're going to
introduce into your signal. So, up next let's talk
about the Coda MB-Stealth, and you might be MBious
of what it can do. This is rated to give 28
decibels of clean gain into your signal, so more than the FetHead,
more than the Cloudlifter. This was released, I'm
not exactly sure when, but it was either 2021 or 2020, this is a very new entry. I believe the company is
based in the Seattle area, but the device itself is
actually manufactured in China. And the MSRP is $109.95, so right in line, less than the Cloudlifter, a
little more in the FetHead, but all kind of right in there. This was specifically designed, I believe with the SM7B in mind. And so, one of the reasons
it's called the stealth is because it's supposed
to be very stealthy, it's just a black tube, which means if you have
your microphone connected to a boom arm and you've got this running
directly into your microphone, it doesn't really stick out that much, it's just gonna kind of look
like a part of your boom arm and it's gonna be very
covert and...stealthy. Now, a thing to note about that design is that unlike the FetHead, you cannot connect this
directly to the back of a mixer. You can connect it to
directly to your microphone, but this won't fit in the back of a mixer. So the FetHead can
connect directly into it, the stealth cannot, which means that if you
don't wanna connect it directly to the output of your microphone, you're just gonna need to
use the patch cable method that we talked about earlier. And so, as has been the case
with our previous tests, this is the SM7B plus 35 gain running through the RODECaster,
NOFX, no processing, and now we'll connect
it to the Coda stealth. And now, without me changing anything, this is the Coda Stealth and the SM7B. I have to kind of whisper
because the level is so high. So again, even though this
was only one more decibel than the FetHead, I had to
turn my gain on the RODECaster, all the way down to 13 from 35, to get a level that wasn't going to clip and my channel fader is still
right at the unity mark, just above halfway. And that's something I've
noticed about the code of stealth is that it must really spend
a lot of time at the gym because it has a ton of gains,
💪 which can sometimes be a pains
because getting levels... I've actually kind of
struggled with a little bit with this one. If you're using the SM7B,
which as I mentioned earlier is kind of a notoriously quiet microphone. I think it's a great choice
because it's really designed to be paired with the SM7B. However, with other
microphones like the PodMic... Let's try this actually. So the pod mic is still something that I do think benefits
from having a signal booster a lot of the time, however, with the Coda stealth, I had to turn the gain
on the cast down to five in order to get it to a
level that wasn't gonna clip. And that might be something that you want. You wanna use your microphone with the gain turned all
the way down to five. If however, you're using the
SM7B, it's a great choice because it's going to be
more than enough power to make this thing really shine. And last but not least on
this little experiment today is a very interesting booster, which is the Klark
Teknik Mic Booster CT-1. Basically, it's the same
idea as the FetHead, but it's in a package
that's a little more similar to the Coda, meaning that you can
connect it right to the back of your microphone, or you can use a cable to connect it to the back of your interface. But the FetHead of these
ones that I'm using is the only one that is able
to be plugged in directly to an interface or a mixer. The CT-1 is also just too big
to fit into those connections. But this is why this
is an interesting one, and why it's one of my favorites
with a couple of asterisks. It came out in 2019, the CT-1 says that it brings
25 decibels of clean gains. So it's right in there
with the Cloudlifter, right a little bit below the FetHead, and the CT-1 has an MSRP of $43.50, which I was able to purchase mine for a little bit less than that. So it is by far even at full retail price, the least expensive of
all these by half or more. And that's why I really do like
this because it works great. I think it sounds good, I
think it's super reliable and it helps me not feel bad about recommending a
signal booster to people. Let's connect it and I'll explain. As is tradition, here is the SM7B with no signal booster, gain back up at 35 and here's the SM7B at 35
running through the Klark Teknik. I'm gonna turn the gain
down just a little bit. So now to get to a level
that I'm comfortable with, I was able to turn the gain
all the way down to 25. So this is a pretty clear signal coming through the SM7P
with the Klark Teknik. At this point, I've been talking about and recommending microphones to people for a couple of years, but I always feel little anxiety... ...not only from existing, but also from recommending
dynamic microphones. Because even though they're great, I know that kind of inevitably somebody is going to
come back to me and say, "I got the PodMic, I got
the SM7B, I got the MV7, whatever it might be, and
it's just not loud enough, what do I do?" And then I say, "Well, you need to look
into getting a Cloudlifter or a FetHead," which is not a big deal, but now, especially if they
spent $100 on a microphone and now they need to spend
another $100 on a booster, sometimes people are like, "Well, now I just spent $200,
I thought I was spending $100, plus I needed to get an
interface or a mixer, which is another 150 to $600." And it can just feel
overwhelming if you're somebody who's diving into this kind
of gear for the first time. I think the CT-1 makes
things a lot more accessible because at its price point
it's just less intimidating, and I think a lot more people
are more comfortable spending that kind of money and it works great. It sounds good, I've
had no issues with it, I've been using it for
months and months now. There are, however, two
potential negatives within, I'll leave this up to you to
decide if there are negatives. One it is made in China, so the Cloudlifter is made the US, the FetHead is made in Holland, the Coda and the Klark
Teknik are made in China. The other one is Klark Teknik. It's a company that was
incorporated in 1974, so they've been around for a long time. However, in 2009, they were
purchased by another company called Music Group, which is Behringer. So they're basically owned by Behringer. Behringer can sometimes be
sort of a controversial name, so I'll leave that up to you
to decide if that's something that's gonna push you away
from the Klark Teknik, or if you don't care
because it's a good thing at a good price. Because it's so accessible, they're pretty much
constantly back-ordered. So if you want one, I would recommend just
putting in the order and then you know,
playing the waiting game.
(the Waiting Game sucks, let's play Hungry Hungry Hippos) And the reason I bring that up is because something like
this microphone right here, the Lewitt LCT-240, which is a condenser
microphone, has an MSRP of $160 and does not need any
kind of signal boost. And I think this is an
outstanding sounding microphone, it's one of my favorites actually. So in a lot of ways, it almost makes more sense to recommend, especially to someone just starting out a condenser microphone, because all they're going to
need is a simple interface with phantom power to connect it to, and then they're good to
go and they're all set, and that's a lot less
frustrating than recommending a dynamic microphone, which then they might also
need to dive into the world of signal boosters. However, condenser microphones
aren't always ideal because they do pick up a
lot more environmental noise. I think condenser microphones are amazing and I, in a way, maybe even do prefer them to dynamic microphones, but they're not as good at noise rejection and stuff like that. So it's always tough to say, you could get a condenser
that might be less expensive if it's something like the Lewitt, but then you're gonna
have background noise, or you can get a dynamic microphone, which is gonna be better at rejecting environmental noise. So, if you don't have the best
treated room in the world, this could be a great option for you, but then you might need to
also invest a signal booster to get a level that you want, so that it sounds as good
as you hope that it sounds. So there are a lot of options out there and it's just important to know that if your dynamic microphone is not getting the level that you want, it's not your fault, it's
not you, it's the microphone and you might just need
to give it a boost. And speaking of things that give boosts, thank you to everybody
who supports my channel through Patreon and YouTube
channel memberships, I very much appreciate that. And if you want to give
your knowledge a boost, check out some of my other
microphone videos right here. (Buck out.)
