Is this happening?
You own good mics and recorders, but clips still hiss when boosted. Every shoot needs noise cleanup. You keep tweaking settings and never feel done. Your audio sounds different every time.
How the problem shows up
Field rigs change constantly. Different inputs, different recorders, different environments. The common thread is running out of clean gain and compensating with hot preamp settings.
The problem
When gain staging is always on the edge, noise becomes normal. That's what slows editing and lowers quality.
The fix
Add clean gain at the mic so your rig has consistent, healthy level across different setups.
Mic → Cloudlifter → Recorder/Interface (phantom power +48V ON) → Edit/Publish
Note: Cloudlifters work with passive dynamic and passive ribbon microphones. They are not compatible with condenser microphones that require phantom power through their XLR connection.
Choose your Cloudlifter
If you want the simplest setup: use the CL-25 Mini. It's the quickest "one connection" way to add clean gain and keep your field kit compact. With the CL-25 Mini, it plugs directly onto the mic's XLR output, and your single XLR cable connects from the CL-25 Mini to the recorder or interface.
If you already own a Cloudlifter: the CL-1, CL-2, and CL-4 do the same job (clean mic activation). They use the standard inline connection in your mic chain.
A quick example
A team kept blaming locations for noisy clips. They added a Cloudlifter and lowered recorder gain.
Result: the same locations produced cleaner audio because the chain stopped living at max gain.
FAQs
Is this only for one type of recorder? No—this is about strengthening the mic signal before any preamp that's short on clean gain.
Where does it go? Mic → Cloudlifter → recorder/interface (phantom power +48V ON).
Does my recorder or interface need to supply phantom power? Yes. The Cloudlifter requires +48V phantom power from your recorder or interface to operate. Enable phantom power on the channel the Cloudlifter is plugged into. The Cloudlifter uses that phantom power to provide up to +25dB of clean gain — without it, no signal passes.
Quick takeaway
If every field shoot turns into noise cleanup, a Cloudlifter helps you get more mic and less preamp—more consistent journalism audio.
