This is typically done anyway to clean up vocal tracks. Sing louder when tracking and then use a gate to block the noise. Its far better to get the gain you need with the 3 gain stages of a high quality preamp.ġ. Instead of the normal 3 gain stages of a normal preamp you add a 4th with it. A Cloud lifter is merely a band aid which with give you an additional gain stage and all the noise associated with an extra gain stage added. Anyplace you go on the neat you'd see that mic is noted for having a low output and you'd need a really good preamp with over 60dB gain to make it sound good. If your voice is so weak you cant get it up above the noise floor then I'd have to say, you made a crappy choice buying a dynamic mic.
Whether that noise is actually something that's going to even matter within a mix is the question. It is going to add noise as a trade off for the extra gain, period, end of story. Does anybody else do this same method of extreme gain staging I do where everything in my project is lowered to -32 db and below just to be able to avoid the hiss? Also, should I just return the CL-1 and swap the Apollo for another one? Is there a better alternative to the CL-1? And could it be my power source? I tried at different outlets and surge protectors and even went to another house and nothing changed. Could it be my Apollo that's defective? Am I using the Cloudlifter right? Everyone has said its clean gain but I've tried everything besides replacing the SM7 and the Apollo, yet I can't get clean gain. I know this is probably the Apollo's self noise but then I add in the Cloudlifter to help fix that and the white noise is even more audible.
The cables did an amazing job of noise cancellation but the white noise/hiss was audible when you passed about 1 o clock on the preamp volume. I ended up exchanging the cloud lifter for another one and buying 90$ worth of Mogami 2534 Gold Studio Neglex cables (I know I could've saved by soldering my own, I just didn't want to go through the trouble). Also, the hiss would become worst (both with and without the CL1) when you activated a Unison plugin such as the LA 610 B/Manley VOXBOX or used moderate compression with a LA2A. Also, in order to record some quiet vocals, I had to completely lower the faders for the other tracks in my project in Logic and then utilize Waves NS1 for further noise reduction. Going straight from the SM7B to the Apollo was a lot better but had some slight humming and white noise that would exponentially increase as you push the preamp volume up. There was a lot of white noise that pretty much was audible no matter what volume you put the preamp at. When they came, I connected the setup with some old XLR cables I had in my basement (One was a Hosa REAN Silver and the other was unmarked). I was originally going to buy the SM7B without the Cloudlifter but kept on reading various posts about how it was pretty much required in order to have a clean signal path (unless you had a dedicated external preamp, which I can’t afford at the time, and it kind of defeats the purpose of buying an Apollo when one of its best features is its Unison preamp emulation). I went online and bought a Shure SM7B, Cloudlifter CL1 and Apollo Twin Quad to use with my 2011 MacBook Pro.