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Old 05-25-2019, 04:51 PM   #16
vdubreeze
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Join Date: Jul 2011
Location: Brooklyn
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Quote:
Originally Posted by karbomusic View Post
The Cloud Lifter idea is OK (I have one) but it's only going to help if it's gain is cleaner than pushing your existing preamp hard, cuz there is no magic in audio.
Which is a legit way of overcoming a real issue, which is that it's common of the top 20% of a preamp's input gain to be noisier (due to the preamp's design) and also sound different, possibly less attractive (same) than at 40 - 80%. Though it doesn't change the noise floor regarding anything else (room, other gear noise) I find that using a clean inline preamp booster to be a huge benefit for low or even low-ish output mics in getting a cleaner result than without.

I used to get around it be not using low output mics (before inline boosters were available). But around the time I realized all the guitar pickups I favored were low output and I actually never met a high output pickup I much liked (and I hated most), I realized that was a dumb approach. I was missing out on some low output mics, like the SM7, that I'd really like using if I at least had a pre that could present it well. For a long time I only had two channels (ULN2) that could. Cloud Lifters made a big difference for me in that I could employ certain mic/preamp combinations that I couldn't before, and for much less than getting a few more clean higher gain pre channels. I guess I'm just more enthusiastic about them for that one pony trick they do. And of my favorite mics now pretty much none are very high output ones. High output mics sort of became my super overwound hot hot output pickup. In the drawer
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