- Hi, I'm Jordan from Kettner Creative.
In this video, I want to show you
what it sounds like to use the Shure SM7B microphone
with the Yamaha MG10XU audio console.
There's a lot of debate online, especially on Twitter,
as to whether or not you need a Cloudlifter or a FetHead
or some type of mic activator with this microphone.
So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna plug it in for you.
I'm going to show it to you both
with and without the Cloudlifter
to give you the information that you need
to make the decision of what's right for you.
So the first thing I'm gonna do is
I'm gonna plug this XLR cable
into the first channel on the mixer.
Then I'm gonna turn this level all the way up
to that triangle position,
which is also known as zero or unity.
And then I'm gonna increase the gain
as I speak into the microphone.
Now you can see here right away
and you can hear it too, I'm recording this as well,
that you can, the meter is only getting up
to about minus six when the gain is at 75%.
So I've gonna move the gain now all the way up
to that 100% mark and I'm gonna move the level up.
There's a lot of people that are afraid
to use the whole range of the gain or the level.
But sometimes you just need to do what you need to do.
You can see here we're bouncing off of plus six.
So it's a little bit hot actually.
So I'm gonna turn it down just a little bit there.
And this, I think, it's coming in exactly
where it's supposed to be when you use this mixer.
So what I'm gonna do now is I'm gonna hop over
to GarageBand here,
arm the track, and then I'm gonna hit record.
Now the reason that I'm recording this right now is
because I do want to see the meters compared
to the two different methods here.
But we're coming in at about zero or minus six.
So we'll see what this sounds like. I'll stop the recording.
I'm gonna disarm that track.
Now what we're gonna do is
we're gonna disconnect the microphone.
We're going to plug it into a Cloudlifter.
And then we're gonna plug the Cloudlifter into the mixer.
Now with the previous step, it's worth noting
that there is zero benefit of using phantom power
with this microphone without a Cloudlifter.
But what a Cloudlifter does or a FetHead
or any other mic activator is it trades phantom power
for reduced gain.
So what we're gonna do is we're gonna click
on phantom power now that we're all the way plugged in.
And we're gonna turn this level up
to that triangle or unity position.
We're gonna increase the gain again
till we come up to zero on the mixer.
Then the reason I wanted to plug
into a separate channel here is you can see
that that meter's going
and you can hear the microphone now is I want you
to see the difference in the gain that's required
between channel one and channel two.
The level knobs for both are exactly where they were.
We are coming in just a hair hotter.
So I can turn the game down a little bit.
But you can see the difference with the gain being maxed out
and the gain being straight up the middle.
And hopefully you can hear
whether or not it's that different.
The Cloudlifter I don't think colors the noise that much.
It's mostly whether or not you can get
by with your project or with your budget
with the little bit of noise that's introduced
by going all the way up to 10 on the gain knob.
So what I'm gonna do here is I'm gonna add a new track
to GarageBand.
All right so here is the second wave.
We're getting level here with the gain at about 50%,
the level at the triangle position.
We're using a Cloudlifter with the Yamaha MG10 audio console
and the Shure SM7B microphone.
So you can see there we, on the meter,
over here, it's about the same as it was over there.
You can hear now.
And then over here was a little bit hotter than there.
So it's kind of in the same range.
The big thing that you're gonna wanna do is go back
and replay this video and hear the differences
between the first and the second sample.
And then just look at how the gain stacks up.
One the gain is fully pinned and one the gain is halfway.
So hopefully this video helps you.
For me, I would probably recommend going
with a Cloudlifter.
Having that headroom and the ability
to be a little bit farther away
from the microphone is something
that I would personally prefer.
But if you know that you can have the microphone right up
in your face, you can save a lot of money without it.
So that's what I would consider
if I was buying the microphone.
If you have any comments about this video,
please leave a comment in the comment section below.
If you want to see pricing or specs
for anything in this video,
please check out the description
in the description area below.
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Thank you for watching!
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