- I've been using the RODECaster Pro and the PodMic
for about a year and a half now,
pretty much since they were released.
And every time I make a video about either of these things,
one of the most common questions I get is,
why aren't you using something like a Cloudlifter
or a Fethead with that setup?
So today, we're gonna see how much of a difference
a Cloudlifter makes when using the PodMic
with the RODECaster Pro.
(upbeat music)
If you're not familiar with the Cloudlifter,
basically what it does is boost the signal
from your microphone so if you're using something
like a PodMic or an SM7B or a dynamic microphone,
basically what's called a passive microphone
that sometimes needs extra volume
in order to be loud enough, this helps you with that.
Because if you just plug your microphone into a mixer
and crank the volume all the way up,
a lot of times what happens is you'll get hiss and noise
and sort of this ugly background stuff.
Now, like I said, I've been using the PodMic,
which is a dynamic microphone with the RODECaster Pro
for about a year and a half.
I don't really have any of those issues.
However, I will say that when I'm using that setup,
I do have my volume knob turned up pretty darn high,
basically usually one notch away from the very top.
And it's loud enough, it sounds great,
I get awesome results but there's there is nowhere
to go from there.
And one thing I noticed is actually in RODE's own
instructional videos for the RODECaster and the PodMic,
if you look in the background at the RODECaster
that they're using, its volume is also maxed out entirely.
So, that led me to believe that there probably
is a little bit of room for improvement.
Now, there are a bunch of different products
that do this same basic thing, boosting your signal
but the two most popular ones
are Cloudlifters and Fetheads.
Fethead usually goes for about $100.
Cloudlifter usually goes for 150
for the single channel version.
This is the two channel version
because my wife, Heather and I record together a lot
and we do our weekly live stream podcast.
And it just made more sense for both of us
to be able to use the Cloudlifter,
that's why I got this one.
It's also a little bit cheaper than buying two
of the individual ones.
The individual ones are $150 a piece
and the CL-2, the one with two ports is $250,
which is really expensive and kind of made me hesitant.
We're gonna talk about that later when I kind of get
in the pros and cons of the Cloudlifter.
The Fethead, on the other hand is a little bit different.
It looks like a big metal adapter that connects
to the back of your microphone
and then the cable goes into that.
But it does the same basic thing in terms
of boosting the signal.
The Cloudlifter does not connect
physically to the microphone.
You run your microphone into it and then you do need
a second XLR cable to go into your mixer or your interface.
So, neither of those setups is better or worse.
It just kind of depends on what works for you.
Do you want something connected to your microphone?
Will that work with your setup?
Or do you want something that's gonna go sort of off
by the mixer?
And then you do need a second cable to connect it.
Now no matter what you choose,
they do run off of phantom power,
which means there's no AC adapter.
There's actually no controls on the unit at all.
And the reason I chose the Cloudlifter
to be totally honest, was I didn't want something
connected to the back of the PodMic.
But also, I just really liked the way that it looks.
It's got this super cool retro kind of vibe.
I've got my guitars where I really like retro style
and just sort of it reminded me of a guitar pedal
like an old one and I just thought it was really cool.
That's kind of why I went with the Cloudlifter.
Totally, I guess a valid reason
but kind of a ridiculous reason too.
And I will say it is built like an absolute tank.
It is super solid.
And one thing I was really happy to realize is that since
the Cloudlifter runs off of phantom power,
there are no power adapters or anything you need to connect.
So, it does add extra bulk to a sleek setup
like the RODECaster 'cause now there's another device
plus another cable to connect.
But there is no power cable so it doesn't take up
another outlet or anything like that.
To turn on the RODECaster,
like right now I have it on channel two.
If I press channel two, I just turn on phantom power
and then that feeds power to that channel.
I haven't taken it apart or anything but if the electronics
on the inside are put together with the same quality
as the outside, this thing should last basically forever.
And once you've got this connected to your mixer
and you've got a phantom power running to it,
what it does is it gives you up to 25 decibels
of clean gain.
So we're on a mixer, you can crank up the gain
and boost your signal and you get that hiss.
It's not really clean.
This does the same thing, boosting the signal
and gives you no hiss.
So it gives you a clean boost.
The setup that I've got right now is I've got two PodMics
running into the RODECaster Pro.
There's no additional processing
for either of these microphones so they're set up
exactly the same.
One of them, this one on my left on your right
with the purple cable is going directly into the RODECaster
and this one on my right your left with the blue cable
is going through the Cloudlifter.
So, let's switch over to the RODECaster Pro and the PodMics
and see how that sounds.
This is the PodMic connected directly to the RODECaster
with no additional Cloudlifter or processing
or anything like that.
It's just sort of the natural signal from the PodMic.
I have the gain set to plus 35 decibels,
which is where I pretty much always use it
and have always used it on podcasts and recordings.
And it works pretty well with my voice.
And I also have the volume slider almost all the way
at the very top.
So, this is also maxing out at about 15
on the broadcast meters, which is great.
It's a perfectly usable level.
Let's see here, actually.
If I go into the level and I turn it down,
you'll hear that background hiss kind of go away
a little bit.
Now, it's gone but my voice is also really quiet.
As I bring it back up to a level where it's loud enough
to use with my voice, you do hear a little bit
of that background hiss.
It's really not too bad.
And it's also something that if it is bothering you,
it's very easy to just get rid of with like
Adobe Audition or running it through whatever
software you use.
But having the microphone all the way at the very, very top
gives me nowhere to go.
Fortunately, I've been a teacher for 11 years
so I'm used to speaking loudly.
But if you're somebody who speaks a little more quietly
or your, you know, you have a guest who's not someone
who's used to speaking loudly, this could be an issue
because once you hit that top level,
there's nowhere else to go from there.
So now on channel two, which has the Cloudlifter attached,
if I put the slider all the way up
and put the gain at the same level,
this is what that sounds like.
So, I'm gonna turn that slider down a little bit.
So we saw a pretty big difference there, actually.
Right now, we're at plus 35.
I can have the slider all the way down
at what, one, two, three like four notches from the bottom.
So, that's a pretty big difference.
And if you listen to the background hiss,
so this is what it sounds like just without me talking
on the Cloudlifted channel versus the other channel.
And if I switch between the microphones,
the sound quality really shouldn't be that different.
This is the direct microphone, you might still hear
some of that background noise.
And this is the Cloudlifted microphone.
I can at least in my headphones here less noise
but the sound quality should overall be the same, basically.
Now, one thing that is really cool
is since I have so much more headspace here,
I can turn down the gain on the RODECaster
and then turn up the volume here and I can be down,
you know, like at plus 27 instead of plus 35.
And still get plenty of volume.
For me, this would be great,
because now I'm one, two, three, four, five, six.
About six and a half notches from the very, very bottom.
I know that's super technical, notches.
And there's plenty of volume for my voice.
I could increase it if I really wanted to,
which would be nice if I didn't necessarily want to speak
super close to the microphone.
And that can be very helpful if you're somebody
who does interviews with people who aren't used to talking
into microphones because they will inevitably
never be close enough to the microphone.
Whenever you're working with someone who's just not used
to it, they always just speak a little too far away.
And so having that extra room to kind of boost their signal
can make a huge difference when it comes to mixing
the final version of whatever you're creating.
And now another big difference
is because the RODECaster's gain
is at plus 27 instead of plus 35, like I normally have it
and the volume slider is just above halfway,
you'll definitely notice a difference
between the background hiss on this channel
versus this channel.
So, here's this one.
So, if you're listening to this like on your phone
or on your laptop speakers, you might not actually notice
it that much.
But if you're listening to it on your headphones,
you should have been able to hear a little bit of difference
in background hiss.
Now, is that an issue or not?
That's entirely up to you.
And again, it comes down to your voice,
how loud you normally speak.
For $250 though, honestly, I thought there was gonna
be a bigger like night and day difference
but it's really more of like a late afternoon,
early evening and day difference.
Like it's definitely there but it's not as extreme
as I thought.
I thought I'd be able to either like turn the gain
all the way down on the RODECaster or I'd be able to like
keep the volume slider almost down at the bottom
and just have so much headroom,
which really ended up showing me how good the preamps
are in the RODECaster.
They're pretty dang powerful and they're pretty dang quiet.
And how I found that out was by connecting it
also to my old Yamaha mixer.
So, this is more of a traditional mixer.
And it's sort of a silly comparison 'cause I believe
this costs like 200, maybe $220 and they still make these.
Whereas this Cloudlifter is $250.
So, this preamp costs more than this entire mixer.
But, just for the sake of reference if maybe you're running
one of these microphones through a different interface
than the RODECaster, let's see what the difference is.
Okay, so now I'm gonna switch back to the VideoMic NTG,
which is up here out of frame just to kind of explain
a few things about this mixer.
So, where the RODECaster you can turn on phantom power
for each individual channel, this mixer just has one button
right here that will turn on phantom power
for all of the four XLR channels.
And phantom power, if you're unaware is pretty magical.
Most dedicated mixers have it and it lets you provide power
to a microphone from the connected XLR cable.
Now I should mention though, that phantom power does not go
through the Cloudlifter.
So, if you have something like a condenser microphone
that needs direct phantom power in order to work,
the power will go here and stop and it will not continue
on to the microphone.
Just something to be aware of.
So, let's set up our little test here.
I'm going to disconnect this XLR cable from the Cloudlifter,
which is actually one of my cons to the Cloudlifter,
at least on the one that I have,
is that it can be really tough to get the cable out
of these connectors sometimes.
Actually, to the point where I'm worried about damaging it.
Come on now.
I feel like it shouldn't be this hard.
I'm like sweating.
(laughs)
I was actually kind of dreading setting up for this video,
'cause I knew I was gonna have to unplug and replug.
I feel like that shouldn't be that hard to unplug.
This side of it is normal so I don't know.
That's just a weird thing.
But anyway, I'm gonna plug this into channel one
of my mixer.
I don't know if you can actually even hear this.
It's showing up as like negative 45 in Adobe Audition.
Now we should be getting to a point
where it's a little louder.
This is the gain entirely maxed out on this channel,
which is probably gonna introduce
some pretty serious background hiss.
So you can hear the hiss going up and down.
Whereas even on the RODECaster without the Cloudlifter,
I don't think there's nearly that much background noise.
And if you look at Adobe Audition over here,
my levels are just really, really small.
So let's go ahead and add in the Cloudlifter.
Press phantom, ooh, okay.
There's a difference, just press phantom power, yikes.
So, if I boost up the gain right around to the level
that I would really want it,
which would probably be around here,
there's actually still at least I'm hearing in my headphones
a bit of background noise.
I can get a fairly clean signal,
but again, this is the RODECaster without the Cloudlifter
and the gain boosted to plus 35.
And this is the Yamaha mixer with the Cloudlifter
and the gain boosted to two o'clock.
So. here's the background hiss on that mixer
with the Cloudlifter.
And here's the RODECaster without it.
So, the reason I wanted to do this test
with the Yamaha mixer is just to explain
why I wasn't initially totally blown away
by the Cloudlifter.
And that's because there wasn't such
a night and day difference.
I'm definitely noticing a bigger difference
on a more traditional mixer, although still quite a bit
of background hiss it sounds like.
Whereas with the RODECaster, even without the Cloudlifter,
it still sounds pretty clean.
And what that showed me was that the RODECaster
just has really good preamps.
It can definitely still benefit to add something like this,
give you a little more headroom,
especially if you don't talk as loudly and authoritatively
as me because when people think of me,
they think of authority and intimidation, obviously.
So, now we're back to our original setup using
the RODECaster Pro and the Cloudlifter on this channel
and no Cloudlifter on this channel.
Honestly, honestly, before I was making this video,
I've been using this for about a week
and I wasn't that impressed with it.
But going back and forth for the sake of this video
where I'm being extra, like extra critical of it,
to me, this microphone with the Cloudlifter
sounds significantly cleaner
than the microphone without the Cloudlifter.
So, this video is actually selling me on the Cloudlifter
more than I was before making the video.
And since I am using a weird mix of not Cloudlifted
versus Cloudlifted, there is a technical term
for when you're using a Cloudlifter on one channel
and not the other and that would be, partly cloudy.
Now, earlier I did mention,
I was gonna talk about some of the cons of the Cloudlifter.
And the biggest one is just the price.
Now like I said, I've only had this one for about a week
but it is built like a tank.
I fully have the expectation especially based on
its reputation that it will pretty much last forever.
So it is one of those things that's pretty expensive
but you buy once, you cry once
and then you just have it forever.
I think if you're using the RODECaster Pro,
you're already using a device
that has a really good clean preamp.
And that means that whether or not you need something
like the Cloudlifter, it's not gonna make the biggest
difference in the world.
Taking that money and investing it
into like a nice microphone
or just saving that money might be a smarter choice.
If you're using a different mixer or a different interface
that doesn't have quite the quality preamps
that the RODECaster does,
then the Cloudlifter makes a lot of sense.
So kind of as always, whether or not it's worth it
is up to you.
I will say that for me, I was really debating whether or not
to keep the Cloudlifter because I just didn't see
the huge difference that I was hoping.
But after making this video, I do actually notice
more of a difference.
It's just, it's pretty dang expensive.
If you have the budget for it and the money is not an issue,
then yes, this is going to give you more gain and cleaner
sounding audio out of your RODECaster
and it's probably a good idea.
If you don't have the budget or it would be a stretch,
I don't think you really really need it
because you can get such good results
just out of here in general.
I've been playing around with audio for many, many years
but I'm by no means a total expert.
And that is actually how I like to approach these reviews
is yes, I could get frequency charts and graphs
and we could nitpick every single little thing
but I'm more interested in how does this function
in a real world, everyday workflow?
You're somebody like me, you produce your own stuff,
you use these tools, is this gonna make it better?
Is it not gonna make it better?
If so, does it make it noticeably better or not?
It's pretty simple.
It's a pretty down to earth approach.
So, I hope that that is helpful.
Now as you probably know, I've got quite a few videos
about the RODECaster and podcasting and podcasting gear.
So I'm gonna put a playlist here that has a whole bunch
of those and you can just spend the rest of the day,
bingeing on those videos.
There's zero calories.
You can binge as many of them as you want.
(upbeat music)