Cloud have teamed up with Neutrik to make their acclaimed Cloudlifter technology smaller than ever.

When low‑sensitivity microphones are used on quieter sources, they deliver a low output level. In such situations, we’re forced to push most mic preamps into the upper reaches of their gain range, where it’s more likely that noise will be introduced, or that controls exhibit ‘gain bunching’, making it trickier to set the optimum level. It’s now over 15 years since Cloud had the bright idea of putting the active circuitry employed in their ribbon mics into a standalone box, so that the gain stage might be used with any passive mic, thus allowing any mic preamp to be used in its optimum range. The result was the Cloudlifter CL‑1, which, along with various more recent stablemates, has generally been shortened to just ‘Cloudlifter’ — and so popular have these been that many engineers now use that word to describe any device designed to boost a passive mic’s signal before the main mic preamplifier.

There’s some variation in Cloud’s products but typically, including in this case, they provide 25dB of fixed gain and are really intended for use with passive ribbon mics and low‑output moving‑coil dynamic microphones. The Cloudlifters need 48V phantom power to work, but don’t pass this on to the mic, thus eliminating the risk of damaging vintage mics that don’t adhere to today’s wiring conventions, or when mics are used with faulty cables. Using a patented Class‑A discrete signal...