Lift Your Sound: How Rodger Cloud Has Transformed The Audio Industry

The one and only CEO and co-founder of Cloud Microphones, the legendary Mr. Roger Cloud.

Welcome sir.

Hey guys.

I can't believe that we have the one and only Roger Cloud in the house.

It's a long time coming my friend because we had, we first, I had our conversation a

number of months ago and it was one of those times where I was like, man, I wish I had

hit the record button on this Zoom call.

I had no idea what to expect, but you know, you know, we're fast friends when it's like

two and a half hours later, we're like, Hey, I think I need to go eat dinner or whatever,

but it was a great conversation, man.

And I, I'm just honored.

I'm hanging out with you guys in Florida too.

Yeah, that's right.

Yes.

That was, that was a lot of fun.

And we might be doing that again, I think in January, if you're, you're heading back

that way for the 10th anniversary of Podfest.

10th anniversary, wow.

It's a little tricky.

That's right around the NAMM show time.

So we might have to have them change the dates.

Yeah.

But, but yeah, shout out to Chris Kremitzos who introduced us.

We want to thank Chris for that and that we really appreciate that.

But well, he's the one that told me about you guys.

He said, you got to meet these guys.

So, you know, he introduced us by email before, before the podcast, Podfest show.

And, and then we got to hang out in Orlando.

Yes.

Yes.

Yeah, that was, that was a lot of fun.

Definitely.

I love what you guys are doing.

Hats off to you.

Yeah.

Thank you.

We appreciate that.

I mean, that's huge coming from you because I think, you know, we're going to, we're going

to talk about your story, Roger.

You've been, you've been in this thing for a minute and you have quite, and we found

that out relatively quickly in that conversation that we had with you.

And you've been around a number of legends and you have a tremendous sort of story as

to what cloud microphones is all about.

But I want to start if I could hear, and we've got some questions already on Amazon.

So Ben, hang out, hang on.

We're going to get to your question.

And that is the cloud lifter.

Okay.

Everyone, you know, our audience, entrepreneurs, podcasters, business owners, live streamers,

maybe just a solo creator, right?

They hear about this thing.

They hear about this metal box that's blue, that's called a cloud lifter.

And they just have like a cursory knowledge of audio.

All they know is like, boy, if I get this, it's going to make things better or louder

if I have a microphone like a Shure SM7B, but louder isn't necessarily better.

It's not exactly what it does, right?

But they have a cursory knowledge at this point of, of audio and they know generally

that this is a thing that they may want.

So if I'm a podcaster, solo creator, why should I get a cloud lifter CL1?

Thanks, Chris.

Yeah.

And just to back that up just a little bit, I want to start with, you know, for, for content

creators out there, you know, a dynamics type microphone, there's, there's three common

types that are used frequently today.

The first is the dynamic microphone, such as the SM7B or even basic microphones like

the SM58 handheld, handheld type dynamic microphones that you see at every live venue

ever. Right. Right.

These are one of the preferred, you know, types of microphones to use for spoken, spoken

voice. And if you're podcasting and you're creating, then, you know, it, it's really,

it's going to be the type of microphone that gives you sort of the most flattering sound

where, you know, if you have like the other two types are condenser microphones and ribbons,

ribbons are also quite gorgeous.

I have one of the cloud ribbons here.

We're going to, we're going to switch over to that in a moment and just to show you a little bit of a

contrast. But to, you know, to get to, to the point of the, of what I'm saying here is that the

condenser microphones, they're beautiful.

There's a lot of them. There's a lot of great uses for them, but you really need a treated

environment and have a lot of, you need to have a lot of control over your room and the sound

waves that can reflect can, can really make a very expensive condenser microphone sound very bad.

You know, if, if you're not in the right situation with it.

So, you know, that being said, most of the USB microphones tend to be condenser types, which

aren't really the preferred technology because that's why you hear a lot of podcasts and things

like that. They, they sound like they're in a kitchen or a bathroom or, you know, they just don't

have a good sound quality to them.

So I want to encourage people to research dynamic type microphones.

Fortunately, they're the least expensive of the three types.

So that's, that's in your favor there.

But one thing they do need is a lot more gain.

And that's one of the reasons people use condensers is and that's why condensers sort of took over in

recording studios and became really popular starting in the 1950s and 60s.

Because prior to that, the ribbon microphone was the king.

Every, you know, you see the old pictures of Elvis Presley and, and, and Frank Sinatra and going,

going back. So the ribbon microphone does need and the dynamic microphone, they both need more

gain than a condenser.

So that's where the CloudLifter comes in.

And here we have the CloudLifter X.

We also, you guys have all seen the CL1 that's out there.

So it's all about gain staging.

And to answer your question is you want to get the best quality of the sound.

You want to get more of the actual microphone itself and less of the sound of your interface.

Because when you have to crank your interface up to get the sound of the microphone, it introduces

artifacts and starts to significantly deteriorate the quality of the audio.

Podcasters are probably saying, well, why do I need this?

I've got a, I've got a USB mic or this or that.

People can hear what I'm saying.

Well, it's also about you want to when people put the ear pods in and they listen to your

podcast, it's a very intimate thing.

You've literally got the sound of someone's voice in your head.

So you want to give them something that's really comfortable and soothing and enjoyable to

listen to if you want them to stick around.

Because if it's harsh or it sounds unnatural or you've got some kind of audio issues like

that, people might not exactly make the connection as to why, but they'll get audio fatigue

and they'll want to they'll want to turn it off and do something else because you can

only listen to that for so long before before it kind of wears on you.

So what I what I've tried to do is educate people, first of all, to to buy them to the

dynamic microphones.

And cloud doesn't even make a dynamic microphone.

We make a ribbon microphone.

It's you know, it's a it's a high end studio beast.

But but dynamic microphones, you can get a really nice one for 50 bucks on Craigslist,

even a brand new one for 100.

You know, you can that's that's the the the price of admission just to get, you know,

a basic like SM 58 style microphone that you can talk into.

And, you know, you'll find that when you plug that into your interface that you do have

to turn it up significantly.

So when you use the cloud lifter, we invented a gain stage that literally becomes part of

your preamp. It's like modding your preamp in a way, because it gives you I like to think

of it as free gain, because on a technical level, there's no components such as capacitors

and resistors in the audio path.

And those are the components that significantly deteriorate your sound.

So by eliminating eliminating that in our patented design, you're able to get way more

of the actual microphone, which also translates to way more of your natural voice

into the computer through your interface without having to crank your interface and stress

your preamps. And that's going to give you a much more soothing sound, something that

people can really, you know, sit and listen to for a very long time.

You know, the point to me is you want to draw people in.

You want the sound of your voice to make them come closer as instead of pushing them away.

So I think that's very important for content creators.

There's so much content being created today.

And if you want the edge, if you want to be a standout, don't stand out for the wrong

reasons. Nice, nice.

That's how man I love.

I love that. You know, Jim and I preach this all the time, Roger.

And it's just like, I know we're the choir right now because like, you know, but it's

so refreshing to have somebody that, you know, believes as strongly as we do with this.

It's like, yes, we're we're live right now.

Those are listening on an audio podcast a week from now.

They're not seeing what's happening.

But we have like lots of little pattern interrupts going on in graphics.

And Roger's got a really cool looking studio and all these amazing microphones and things

behind us. But if we didn't sound good or if we had like a little crackle going on or

I had a real noise thing that had like a little weird pitch going on.

It doesn't matter if you're watching this thing or not.

And seeing all of the frosting and the bells and whistles and the clouds and the lightning

and all of that stuff.

None of that matters because you're being annoyed by the audio.

It's not. And people will stick around if right now my camera went dark.

They're still hearing a conversation.

You know, maybe some people would prefer that I go dark right now, but I won't.

But it's so refreshing to have someone that understands that even on video, audio is

the most important thing.

And it's it's hard to it's hard to really understand that until you become really annoyed

by really bad audio and really noisy, noisy audio.

And you touched a little bit on USB microphones, Roger.

And I really wanted to roll into that because I think a number of creators, especially

solo creators, are gravitating towards USB microphones because there's well, there's

a couple of reasons. Number one, it's super easy, right?

Just plug it into your computer and you could you know, we have USB microphones and we've

used them before.

But once I mean, once you have an interface and you have an ability to plug a traditional

microphone cable or XLR into an interface, it does you do hear a difference.

I mean, do you want to sound like you're on a Skype call or do you want to sound like

you're broadcasting on the radio or on television?

You know, that's really the question.

And, you know, I can I can almost feel people thinking, well, you know, I've my podcast

has thousands of followers and I'm just using this little basic setup or, you know, I

have a USB microphone and it sounds OK and people are still following us.

And that may well be true, but, you know, you've got those people because they're

really into what you're saying and the people that might be more into what you're saying

could get more into what you're saying if there wasn't this barrier between you and

the audience. And that's my argument for trying to really step up your audio.

Because, you know, if if someone's, you know, walking on the moon for the first time,

you're going to listen to it no matter how it sounds.

Really, it's something really super interesting.

But, you know, if it's if it's a little more casual, you know, and you want people to

be drawn in and become part of part of your your your broadcast and part of your family

in a way, you know, then then take some time to think it over, you know, try to see

what you can do. It's not it's not that expensive to get into really great sound these

days. The technology is there and it's very affordable.

That's true. I was going to. Yeah, go ahead, Jim.

No, I was going to say, too, and I love that explanation because, like Chris said, we

both came from that. And as much as we've heard, you know, you both right now are

talking on an SM7B with a cloud lifter, I'm actually using the MV7X with a cloud

lifter. And so it doesn't matter what microphone you use.

If it's an XLR and I'm now definitely, you know, I'm at the church of Roger Cloud

when it comes to this, it makes you sound better.

And the way you explained it, Roger, of how when we were at PodFest, of how you're

really getting the natural sound of the microphone because you're not having to use

as much of the preamps and the software was like, that's when the light bulb went on

for me. I'm like, wow, that's just, you know, it's mind blowing and love it.

And most dynamics type microphones, you know, this SM7 is what we call a large

diaphragm dynamic microphone.

It's got a little more body than a small diaphragm.

You know, a small diaphragm example would be your venerable SM57, which is

essentially what the SM7B is, but with a small diaphragm.

It's very, very similar.

Right. And, you know, but there are any number of dynamic microphones between

eighty nine and one hundred and ninety nine dollars.

And all of them sound great.

They all just have a little different flavor.

I don't really think of microphones as, oh, I need a better mic.

I mean, maybe if you're using a USB, you need a better mic.

But all kidding aside, they're really all just different flavors.

And, you know, I was on a panel down there at that at that show and we were

talking about the different microphones and how, you know, people don't know what

microphone to get.

Like if you're in New York City and you go into B&H, they have a room where you

can talk into several different microphones.

Or if you go to a guitar center, you can get the guys to to let you try some of

their demos and listen to the sound of a few different microphones.

And why I think that's important is because they're all great.

It's just which one expresses you.

Like if you have a highly sibilant voice, then maybe you want a microphone that

tames that a little bit as a little more mellow in the upper band frequency.

Or or if you have a really deep muffly voice, maybe you want one that's a little

brighter that that pushes those frequencies.

So, you know, there's always it's to me, it's a joy to try different microphones.

We have, you know, several hundred microphones in our recording studio.

This is actually our podcast studio.

So it's just one room set up like this.

But we, you know, just about 90 feet from here, we have a full production,

large format style recording studio and we have microphones going back to the

1930s and and and 40s and 50s and all the way through today.

And each one of them has their own unique voice that expresses

something a little different.

Every microphone is great on something.

You just got to find what that something is.

And, you know, when it comes to your voice, you know, you can get a for 30 bucks.

You could probably find a dynamic microphone on Craigslist that'll get you by for a

while until you can get something a little nicer.

So, you know, that's kind of where I'm coming from.

Is there all different flavors of of you?

Yeah, which one is where you're at, you know, and find out what, you know, you

don't have to jump and spend 600 bucks and, you know, on all of the stuff and an

amazing interface just because so and so has one and told you on a YouTube video

that this was the best one or whatever.

It's like, I love that.

I love the start where you're at.

And, you know, you guys have this huge, you know, I mean, it's a studio, but it's

a lab, right? You guys are testing out microphones constantly and research and

just kind of like looking at sine waves and how it affects different people's

voices and all of that stuff.

And, you know, that you guys are like to say that you're in the weeds is sort of

a of an understatement.

So like for you to be able to say that.

We are the weeds.

Yeah, we are. We are the weeds.

I love that. That needs to be your T-shirt.

You know, we are the clouds. We are the weeds, you know.

But you did mention something about how, you know, obviously you have ribbon

microphones and you said that you don't make dynamic microphones.

Did you ever think and start going down that road of making dynamic microphones?

Yeah, you know, we're we're we're looking at some things.

You know, our time may come.

It's the challenge with the dynamic microphone is is that, you know, we have a

very strong commitment.

You mentioned this earlier before the before the before the podcast started,

you know, how we manufacture.

And this is a great lead into that.

One of the reasons we haven't made dynamic microphones to this day is because

if we were going to make those in the United States 100 percent.

You know, it's going to be tough to sell a thousand dollar dynamic microphone.

You know, it's just it's going to cost a lot of a lot of resources.

So we're trying to look into some kind of hybrid things that we might be able to do,

because we do have a strong commitment to our manufacturing,

being local here in the United States.

And with the heart of the heart of the cloud lifter and the circuit boards for

all of our products are made, you know, on the Navajo reservation in northern

Arizona. So, you know, all of the every single one of these is put together by

people who are have high tech, good paying jobs in one of the most impoverished

communities in the entire country.

That's that's an amazing story.

And I'm glad you segue to that.

And, you know, I guess, you know, I would love to hear a little bit more about it,

because we discussed it on our phone call that we had months ago.

Was it did you guys just see that need in in that community of a way for for

cloud to give back to to them or to to find like what what sparked your interest

in in involving yourself in the Native American community there?

Well, it's interesting. There's a lot of different factors that sort of all came

together at once to make that happen.

I've you know, I moved to Arizona.

You guys are from Georgia. I'm from Georgia, too.

So I grew up outside of Rome and and whatnot.

So I moved to Arizona.

It was it was a couple of decades ago.

And when I moved here, I got involved with a lot of the native communities

because there are a lot of Native American people here in the Tucson area,

as well as the rest of the state.

And getting to know some people in those communities and being a part of some of

the ceremonies and things that they do here has touched me in a lot of ways

and helped me on my personal journey of growth as well.

And, you know, when when we first started cloud,

we were hand building all the circuit boards right here at our facility.

You know, I mean, we get an order for 20 cloud lifters.

We were doing a victory lab because that was that was a lot, you know,

you know, in those early days.

And so but each one of them was hand soldered and it was really challenging.

It was really challenging to to to do that kind of work,

especially as the volume started to come up.

And so we started looking for someone that did

SMT type of technology boards.

And interestingly enough, one of the engineers here came across

they call it 12 and industries is the name of the company upon.

It's a Navajo owned company in Loop, Arizona, on the reservation.

Came across some information about them.

And as it turns out, they used to make circuit boards for Apple and GM and Ford.

And they had a lot of

circuit board manufacturing going on on the Navajo reservation

up until sometime in the mid 90s.

And it really started to taper off for them because everything started

moving to China and so forth.

So, you know, we found them and reached out and it

and we were delighted to find out that they still had the capabilities.

And that's kind of how it started.

And once we once we made that connection, it was a no brainer.

We just had to go forward with it.

And so that that happened in 2011 and we're still there to this day.

That's great.

And so the other the other question I think about as you're

as you're talking about the story of we got an order for 20

and everybody's doing a victory lap.

When somebody figured out that using a CL one with an SM7B

was the right way to go to, you know, sort of

alleviate and become the solution, so to speak, between

I mean, maybe the distance between your voice and the diaphragm or whatever,

in order to give it the gain that it needed to sound really great.

What's that story like?

Like when when that sort of hit, because I know it's been

like it's been a great thing for you.

And obviously, it has been a great thing.

You know, I think the Ari 20 might have been the first microphone that that

that was not a ribbon that I heard of, because when we so

interestingly enough, some people don't know this.

The first cloud lifter that we actually made was the CL two.

It just wasn't called a CL two.

It was just called the cloud lifter.

And and my thinking behind that at the time was that,

you know, because the cloud lifter, that that's a whole other story

we can delve into if you want.

But, you know, I really when we discovered the cloud lifter,

it was kind of by accident.

But my reasoning was is that this is so good, everyone's going to want to.

So we just made the two channel right away.

We didn't even think about the one channel, right?

Because and so we we sold, you know, we sold those for about a year

and realized that there was a need for a single channel.

And that's when we broke it off into the CL one, CL two.

But, you know, it started off.

OK, so a little backstory on the cloud lifter is

I'm going to switch over. This is our ribbon microphone.

OK, I'm going to right now you're still hearing the SM seven,

but I'm going to I'm going to pull this forward a little bit.

This is one of the cloud,

cloud ribbon microphones and return down the SM seven.

OK, can you can you guys hear me OK? Oh, yeah. Yeah.

OK, so this is the cloud ribbon.

It has the cloud lifter built inside. So

when we designed the cloud lifter, it was specifically to be the internal

component of the ribbon microphone in order to give the ribbon microphone

enough output level and strength

to be compatible with your modern equipment.

Ribbon microphones have you know, they were the first type.

They were the first super high fidelity microphone,

full bandwidth type microphone.

And it was around 1929

when RCA was put the first commercial ribbon microphones together.

By 1931, they had the PB 144, I believe it was called.

And that eventually evolved into what they called the 44A,

which evolved over time became the 44B and then the BX.

Eventually, it was retired and replaced with a microphone called the BK11.

So, you know, the thing about the ribbon microphone

was that it needs a huge amount of gain, even more than the SM7.

If you think the SM7 needs gain, well, the ribbon microphone needs even more.

So in the 1930s, they had these preamps that RCA designed

called the OP6 that had about 90 decibels of clean gain.

And they were just phenomenal.

We have about I think we have about 10 or 12 of them next door

that are in use and restored in the studio.

We use them all the time because they they're so clean.

Because they they sound they have a sound, you know, we like.

But so, you know, I fell in love with the ribbon microphones,

you know, with the RCA microphones and some of the other vintage microphones.

And so we started restoring them and using them in our studio

and selling some and keeping some and just trying to outfit our studio

with that that gorgeous sound.

As you can see, it sounds quite different compared to the dynamic microphone.

And if you get close, it has a lot of proximity effect.

Right now, we're using the voice mode.

If I flip this switch.

Now you're in full frequency mode, so it's even bigger.

Oh, and I'm not too much for voice, so that's why we pull the voice mode.

But but for an instrument or at a greater distance, it's the perfect balance.

So the 44 R44A is is named in homage to the RCA 44A,

but the A actually means active in our case, which wasn't the case,

of course, with the RCA mics.

And ours was the first active mic to come ribbon mic to come out

and have the voice music settings so that you can instantly tame

those giant plosives and low end frequencies in order to get a more clear signal

in the mid range in the upper band frequencies. So. Yeah.

And so that's kind of what led to the cloud lifter.

And when we.

Design the circuit, the first prototypes of the circuit for the active mics,

we put it in a little box.

This was before cloud was even announced.

We weren't even a company yet. And

we put it in a little box to try it with our prototype ribbon microphones

that we had been designing.

And it was it was like a light bulb moment where we said, hey,

this box is just killer.

So I started plugging other mics into it and I plugged an SM58 into it.

And I was like, wow, this is going to change the world.

We have to do this.

And that's when, of course, when we came out with the two channel cloud lifter.

And that was when we launched our company in 2009.

It was the the Javits Center in New York City.

We got a 10 by 10 booth and we just showed up there and put our mics

and cloud lifters on the table and everything after that's history now.

So that's great. It's almost like a little happy accident.

It was a happy accident.

But I knew the moment I plugged in that box that

this was going to be a thing. Wow.

And we literally within like maybe three, four, six weeks,

something before that before that initial show,

we put that whole product together, got the spring screen print

and the boxes made and and we went forward with it.

And man, it was the middle of the recession.

It was a bad time for a lot of people financially.

And the cloud lifters, they just took off because that was something

that helped people, empowered people and saved them actual money.

Because to get a preamp to operate at the level

that a cloud lifter allows you to operate with your basic interface,

you're going to be in for several thousand dollars

if you know, for something really high quality.

And the cloud lifter gives you that quality

or a similar quality, at least just by,

you know, having it between your basic interface and your microphone.

Do you have like a.

This is this was the other thing, too, is that a lot of

kind of newer interfaces are coming out and they'll still they'll kind of

they phrase it somewhat of like it has plenty of gain for, you know,

you know, the more gain hungry dynamic microphones.

They may not say sure, you don't need a cloud lifter with a sure SM7B,

but we all know what they're saying, right?

But, you know, the one of the roadcast or pro two,

which Jim and I are both using right now.

Sure, I can plug in and it's got a SM7B setting,

but I'm still cranking up the gain.

And this is great.

I think, you know, decent preamps in it.

But when I put the cloud lifter, when I put the CL1 in the chain,

which is what you're hearing right now,

and I dial back the gain to keep my my signal

between negative six and negative 12 dB,

and it's just you just get the it just it's hard to explain.

It just feels better.

It just feels better hearing my voice in in my head

and knowing that I'm not stressing the preamps of the mixer

or the interface in this concert in this is just for me, it's

it's great peace of mind.

But in your estimation, Roger, like, is there an interface?

It let's let's just say, quote unquote, affordable interface

out there that plays well with the cloud lifter.

And you're not allowed to say all of them.

But like, are there are there are there certain, you know,

is it a, you know, focus right?

You know, or or the road

roadcaster pro or, you know, sure, MVI or whatever.

Is there a particular interface that you found in your in your research

that has great preamps that works well with the cloud cloud?

Well, I mean, the cloud lifter is going to help just about any

any interface to get the most out of it.

I'm really liking the new SSL 12.

That's what we're that's what you're hearing right now. OK.

The SSL has come out with a very affordable

interface, but it has some pretty pretty nice preamps on it.

They sound really good.

They still need a cloud lifter, but right.

But, you know.

The thing about, you know, there's.

All gain is not created equal, you know, all gain is not equal in quality.

Just because you have enough gain

doesn't mean that the quality of the gain is there.

And what's unique about the cloud lifter is it becomes a modification

to your preamp, allowing you to have a really elegant

gain stage before your signal ever has to go through

components that could do that could reduce the quality of your signal.

Now, on a very technical level,

all preamps have capacitors and resistors in the audio path,

unless the preamp doesn't have phantom power, which is almost unheard of today.

Then there's there's a need to have capacitors to block the DC voltage

so it doesn't damage your preamp.

So.

The thing that's so unique about the cloud lifter is

it gives you all that gain without having to go through any capacitors

or resistors in the actual audio path itself.

And so it's like this.

It's like cheating in a way.

You're getting free gain and you don't didn't have to use these,

you know, capacitors in your in your audio path.

So it's like it mods your preamp in a way.

It's it sort of mods your microphone in a way.

It puts something between the two, a buffer that gives you

significantly more of the actual mic itself.

So it's going to sound different, not because it changes

the way the microphone sounds, but because it gives you more of the way

the actual microphone does sound.

You know, it gives you more of the authentic microphone

as you get to the upper band, upper gain range of your preamp.

As you know, even with the roadcast, the pro caster, their road caster,

excuse me, you know, it has enough.

It has enough gain to so that you can hear the SM seven.

But something about the sound, the balance of the sound

is improved when you do use the cloud lifter because

you're getting a fuller, more complete picture.

It's like having more resolution.

It's like HD audio or something.

It's like, you know, it's like the difference between,

you know, an iPhone three and a or an iPhone four and an iPhone 14.

You know, it's like there's so much more resolution in the photographs.

It's kind of similar to the sound.

You're getting a ultra resolution, full bandwidth, more richness,

more character that's authentic to what you're doing

as opposed to a different type of character that gets introduced

because you're driving this preamp so hard.

So, you know, do people need cloud lifters to hear their mic?

Maybe not, you know, but does it sound more significantly different?

Yes. And is that better?

Well, I'll let I'll let you guys be the judge of that.

You know, I don't like to speak in terms of better.

I like to speak in terms of different.

But it is a very nice choice to have because it is more of the authentic

sound of the microphone itself and more resolution and depth of of

of your sonic, you know, character.

That's right. Yeah, it's definitely spoiled me because I know it.

I definitely see the difference.

And, you know, even doing some of the dialing in on some of the other things,

but just by having that gain before, you know, going into the soundboard,

I think Chris could tell he's made a big difference for me.

And I, you know, I don't know what I'd do without it now.

Right. That's the other problem you've run into. Right.

Well, it's easy to take it with you.

That's true. I'm going to switch back over to the SM7.

I want to. I want to.

Well, before I before I turn the SM7 up, I'm going to.

I'm going to just completely remove the cloud lifter X.

Oh, so that you can hear what this I mean,

I know that you guys are familiar, but for the audience here.

This will be fun for me to edit afterwards, Roger.

I appreciate all of the changing you're doing to your your track.

I'm kidding. This is awesome.

OK, so I'm going to turn down the cloud ribbon for a second.

OK, and then I'm going to turn up the SM7.

I'm going to have to turn it up a lot more than I did. Oh, yeah. Before. And

so.

So that's about where the SM7 was.

I don't know how much of that you hear.

Maybe if I get really close to it, you get a little bit more

and see how I'm having to like, basically, I'm pegging this

input input gain here.

I've got it totally pegged and I'm right on top of the microphone.

And if I back up like this or I turn my head,

you're losing your sound, right?

Now, I'm going to enter the I'm going to enter the cloud lifter.

So now we're now we're with the cloud lifter

and I'm not on the mic.

I can get on the mic, but also if I'm back here,

I've got enough headroom.

I could be way back here and you can still hear me, right?

Yeah, yeah. Coming coming through fine.

So that's one of the benefits.

It's not that I can't get sound without the cloud lifter,

but with the cloud lifter, I can get sound without the cloud lifter.

With the cloud lifter, I've got a lot more flexibility.

I don't have to have the mic right in my face.

I can if I turn my head because I'm talking to someone else

or if there's you know, if I'm at a table with several people

talking or whatever it is, you're not going to get those dropouts.

And you've got tons of headroom.

And even if I come way back here, you can still hear the mic.

Yeah. So if you have a microphone such as the SM 58,

something that's less, you know, less expensive,

you're going to have a similar sort of result.

You're going to have more flexibility.

And the thing that I like about dynamic microphones like these

is that they're hyper focused on what's right in front of them.

But you can still get a little more extra headroom

by having the cloud lifter.

But it's also still rejecting all the stuff that's going on

in the back of the room.

And it's not necessarily reaching out to the to the road

to hear the trucks going by or the dog barking next door,

whatever it may be.

You're able to just have a more natural experience.

I mean, the point of the microphones and the technology,

even though it seems complicated and you've got an extra thing

you got to hook up and you've got to learn all this stuff

with your board and all this kind of thing, all these kind of things.

But the whole point of the end is to make your content

and your experience a much more natural, realistic experience.

And I feel that the cloud lifter helps do that because of,

you know, all the extra gain that you get.

And we're actually using the X today, which has gives you up to 36 DB.

But yeah, can we talk a little bit about the effect of the noise

and a little bit about noise floor without getting without getting too,

you know, in the weeds, so to speak.

But like, I think generally people think, OK,

my microphone needs to be louder.

And so they crank up their their preamp in their interface. Right.

And what that does is it introduces more noise from the room around you.

Whereas if you use a cloud lifter

and then you were to bring up your gain,

commensurate with everything else that's going on.

How does that affect the noise in your room?

So I'm switching back over to the ribbon now.

So, yeah, noise is a there's there's a lot of different types of noise

and understanding.

What kind of noise you're experiencing,

one of the one of the things the cloud lifter does is it

it helps to get rid of the noise that comes from your preamp.

Most you know, there's like a white noise, a hash sounding like static

that comes from your preamp when you get to the upper gain range.

It, you know,

you know, it sounds fuzzy.

It's, you know, it's in the background.

It the signal of the microphone is sort of in this cloud of

of of static noise, white noise.

What the cloud lifter does is it gives you more of the actual microphone.

But the noise actually stays the same.

It's just the signal of the microphone is much greater in relationship to it.

So as you turn down the input gain,

because you've got so much more signal, the noise goes down with it

because you don't need to have your preamp at that same setting anymore.

So that's one type of noise that's preamp noise.

And there's other types of noise like electrical man,

electrical magnetic interference and RF and stuff like that.

It comes from you've got power running through the walls.

If you run your XLR cable along a power cable,

you'll hear the hum, the 60 cycle hum.

There's like radio towers everywhere all around us these days

and different things that can cause noise to infiltrate your signal.

And sometimes it's because your microphone cable becomes like a giant antenna

without proper grounding.

You know, a lot of these old buildings, especially like you go

somewhere like New York City, a lot of old buildings where the grounding

might be maybe out of date.

And you're going to you're going to find grounding problems that create hum

and these types of interference noises.

They come through literally more as like a hum hum.

You kind of hear that.

And that's that's usually a grounding issue or

or some kind of, you know, interference issue.

And the cloud lifter can actually help with that, because once again,

you're getting more of the actual microphone

and whatever is infiltrating your microphone cables

via electrical interference, it's still there.

But in relationship to the signal, now you've got much greater amount of signal.

And that is reduced to a point where it's not really audible or distracting.

And so the cloud lifters help with that as well.

What the cloud lifters can't do is help with the noise

that's happening in your room right outside of your window

or on the other side of your door, your air conditioner.

Actually, you know, that's not entirely true.

The cloud lifters, there there is.

I should go over the cloud lifters and do another little great.

Yeah, that was definitely on my list to talk about.

But to wrap up that part of it, though, it's a noise that's going on

in the background of where you're recording.

That's going to increase with the game.

I mean, it's just acoustic,

you know, organic acoustic noises that are happening in your room.

So the way to control that is like we were talking about earlier.

Get a nice dynamic microphone that's more more focused

that that rejects a lot of that stuff, something that's hyper focused

that just picks up just you.

And that's I think that's one of the reasons the SM7B has become so popular,

because it's excellent at just focusing on what's in front of it and nothing else.

Yeah. And it's you know, we always when people ask us, what kind of mic do you

we ask them what kind of room they're in.

We need to make you know, you need to make sure that you don't

you don't have fans and air conditioning and all of that stuff.

And I guess is it is it safe to say that like

the cloud lifter can is can turn a dynamic microphone essentially into a condenser?

Yeah, I would.

I would say that it

it does help it to perform like a condenser. Right.

But you still retain the natural characteristics of the dynamic microphone.

And what's nice about that is that

the character and the and the way that the dynamic microphone

rejects the room is still still there.

It still does that.

But the amount of like signal that you get

is definitely more consistent with what you would expect out of a really nice

condenser mic.

So I've hooked the SM7 back up.

And now this time we have it with the cloud lifter Z,

as you can see here. Yeah. And

I don't know if you can hear this.

I'm going to this is our full frequency mode.

I'm going to be really quiet and turn up the gain.

It's pretty low in the background, but we do have an air conditioner on in here.

I mean, it is Arizona. So

about one hundred and nine outside right now.

But I'm going to be really quiet as a mouse here and I'm going to turn up the gain.

I don't know if you can hear the air conditioner.

And the reason I'm doing this is because the cloud lifter Z

has a variable high pass, which you can use to filter out

some of that type of low frequency background noise. And

here we go. So I'm I'm really cranked at this point.

You hear it a little bit. Yeah. You can hear the air.

So as I turn as I turn the Z knob,

you're going to hear it disappear.

Oh, yeah.

So we've just filtered out.

The low frequency acoustic noise that's in the room

with the cloud lifter Z by engaging the high pass filter here.

And then using the impedance knob, which is basically a variable high pass

to shave away that low frequency material until it's gone and just focusing on

the voice and all that low frequency rubbish that you don't really want.

It's gone. It's also great for closings.

If you'll notice, like a lot of people have trouble with, you know, sounds that

words that begin with P and you hear that sound.

Oh, yeah. We'll check this out. So, right.

I've got I've got the cloud lifter Z here.

I'm going to go back.

I'm in full frequency mode now, so you'll hear the air

so you'll hear kind of the plosive.

It sounds like a kick drum, right?

I don't know how well that's translating because I'm not listening with my phones, but

but.

Like that.

And if I shave that away.

And then it's gone, right?

So you can you're dialing out that low end that could be pushing that that

that clip sound, that that extra air that's pushing the diaphragm.

Exactly. And that that clip sound.

You know, that that literally just destroys your headroom.

It just eats away at your headroom.

So headroom is for for those that might not know is that, you know,

the amount of rise to your signal that you can get before you reach a distorted

level in your chain, you know, if you're if you're recording,

you know what not having enough headroom sounds like because it just totally

distorts that nasty sort of digital clip sound.

You don't want that in your in your audio.

So by having plenty of of headroom,

you're able to get a really loud, loud enough signal, clear enough signal,

but without going over that threshold,

which causes that digital clip to happen, which doesn't sound very good.

So by using the cloud, if you're Z with the high pass filter up front.

And by the way, if you have a high pass

filter on your device, you can use that to the cloud.

If you didn't invent the high pass, it's a cool feature.

It's nice to have.

But there are other ways to do that.

But most people end up doing it in

post because that's what they have in a form of a plug in.

And the reason it's better on the front end and the reason we included it with the

cloud literacy is because by by getting rid of that low frequency material that

will drive you to go over that clip of headroom,

you're able to get more headroom on the way in because that that signal never hits

your interface.

Once it's there, you can't really get rid of the clip.

You might be able to get rid of the

plosive, you know, the the pop of the P as long as it didn't go over that threshold.

But you're never going to truly get rid of that digital clip.

I mean, there are some tools if you want

to spend, you know, an hour trying to get rid of one little sound and that kind of

thing, you know, it can be done, but it's a lot of work.

It's better if you can get if it's never there in the first place,

then you've got all this headroom and once again, it's about making it empowering

people to make it easier and more natural to capture without having all these things

that can distract us. Yeah.

Anytime you can avoid doing any of that stuff in post and using Isotope RX 9 or

whatever it is that's going to, you know, they have a plug in called

plosive remover.

And I mean, it tries to do the same thing,

but you're just at that point, you're already paint like the house is painted.

Right. You have you have something done already.

There's already a distorted version of of that.

I love the idea of being able to say, hey,

when I record it, this will never go there.

This is, you know, not necessarily limiting, not a limiter, but it's like, hey, listen,

there's a there's a frequency range here that does not need to be on your voice

ever. And that's like the first thing I do in EQ for voice is like there's just

just get that low, low, low, like only a dog can hear kind of stuff out because it

all that does is just it's just in the way.

Right. And so I love the fact that you

can just never useful in a mix either if you're producing music.

Yeah. Right.

Both vocal, you know,

and it's you know, it's not like you can feel it really either.

But I love I mean, you said like, you know, people can do it with plugins

and the whole preemptive thing makes sense, too.

But I like to just have like a dial like that, like that.

Just having a dial just for some reason just feels like I don't know if you just

feels feels good to me to be able to dial.

Maybe it's the bass player in me, you know, dialing in that right amount of

distortion.

So it just sounds like geezer Butler or whatever.

But we do have a question, Roger, from our friend Phil Hill on Amazon.

He wants to know how to get trained on the setup and the tuning

after he buys a cloud lifter and a mic.

And I do have an overhead shot here to give everyone sort of an example of

input and output here.

But Roger, I'll roll this over to you in terms of, you know,

I mean, this thing in terms of what you need to do is very simple, right?

You just need an extra mic cable.

I think that's one one thing you definitely will do.

It sits in your chain, right?

So you got your mic,

you know, whatever dynamic mic you've got, you're going into the the cloud lifter

and you're coming out with your mic cable and you're going into your interface.

And then from there, I think maybe that's where Phil kind of feels.

Is there I'm assuming you've got spots on cloud microphones dot com that kind of

walk you through this stuff, right?

That's right.

So we do have some some videos on our website and Phil.

And thank you so much for your question, Phil, by the way.

Cloud is also always here to help with any kind of one on one questions.

You just have to call into the number and,

you know, dial in the prompt for support.

We're always happy to help.

But we do have videos.

You can also email us at support at cloud

microphones and we can shoot back those videos with a direct link.

We have a cloud that your users guide video.

It's really quite simple.

Now,

Chris is right.

You do need an extra cable with the cloud lifters.

And

I think that that is actually a feature.

If I may explain that, yeah, there are a few type of knockoff brands

and stuff out there that have come out.

Some of them will actually plug directly

into the back of the microphone and hang off of the microphone.

But I don't in my opinion, I don't want that

because that will that can start to stress your connectors and cause

shorts over time with your your microphone.

And it's also this clunky thing that just kind of hangs off your microphone

by using an extra cable, you're able to make it clean and protect your microphone

and be able to utilize the technology without sacrificing something else,

which in that in that case would be the integrity of the the the the XLR port

on the microphone itself.

And it's really just as simple as putting

the cloud lifter between your mic and your interface and using the 48 volts

phantom power feature on your your interface to engage the cloud lifter.

The cloud lifter will not pass any signal

if you don't use the 48 volts phantom power because it needs phantom power to

operate now once again, it doesn't pass phantom to the microphone.

So that's really helpful in the case of ribbon type microphones.

A lot of the ribbon microphones can actually be damaged by using phantom power

if you apply phantom power to them and it's a passive type of microphone.

Certain other types of microphones and

like power supplies can also get damaged.

So by utilizing the phantom power in the cloud lifter, but not passing it through

to the microphone, and it's actually a feature that protects

the microphone from potential damage.

Good stuff. And what's up, Mr.

Maude is in the house and Amazon, we appreciate the comments.

Mr. Maude, if you don't have a cloud lifter by now,

we need to get you and Christina Nietzsche on the cloud lifter train because,

you know, this is this is where it's at.

And also, I would be remiss, Roger, we've talked like we we could go on for a long

time, but we didn't really go in depth too much on the cloud lifter X.

And I do I do have this as well.

You did mention, you know, it's got additional gain.

So there's a there's a toggle switch on it.

But I was very interested when you were

talking to us about this originally and that this is a transformer based mic

activator, and I think generally again, you know, our our audience may not know

like, you know, you know, transformer more than meets the eye, you know,

Decepticon, like that's what they think a transformer is.

Right.

But I'd love to I'd love to get your take on,

you know, sort of what the cloud lifter X is.

And if you're a content creator, if you're a solo creator,

if the X is for you and maybe some, you know, some others who are using it and are

benefiting from it.

Yes. So basically the the standard cloud lifters, which are tried and true,

which everyone, you know,

uses already with their a lot of people use already with their their

podcast, they give you more of the actual microphone itself.

There is no change or alteration to the character or any kind of colorization or

anything that occurs, it's just a very natural, clean, super clean,

more of the actual mic represented by the gain stage in the cloud lifter.

The cloud lifter X was a departure from that in a way,

but not really.

So to explain that, you still actually do have the ultra clean gain that the of the

standard cloud lifter.

But what we've done here is we've added an input transformer.

And what that means is it's literally wires that are wrapped around a metal core

that produce a magnetic energy that increase.

They actually give you some gain in this case.

Transformers have been used.

For well, at least since the night,

at least since the 1920s, probably before that.

And basically, you know, all of your electrical grid, if you if you look out

your window and see your your your power lines coming into your building,

there's usually a big box of some sort hanging off of that.

That's probably a transformer because, you know, you've got thousands of volts

of electricity going through your wiring, but you only need, you know,

one hundred and twenty at your house.

So it bleeds that off and it transforms that into something that you can use.

So there's different types of transformers

in the audio world.

Transformers have been mostly used on large format type recording

consoles and broadcast consoles.

So when you see the big mixing board at the

you know, NBC or a major studio, most of those have transformers on all

the inputs and what the transformers do is they.

You know, there's a purpose for them.

A lot of times it's to increase the gain.

In the case of the Cloudlifter X, we're using one to two and a half.

So you put one signal in and two and a half times comes out and then that feeds

the Cloudlifter core, so in the total you get 36 DB with the with the standard

Cloudlifter being around 25 DB, that extra, you know,

bit of gain, the extra 10 DB or so is a result of the transformer transforming

that audio signal as it runs around this this core into something that's even more

powerful. OK, now I know that's this is I know that's pretty technical, but

what happens is and one of the reasons you if you watch documentaries like Sound City,

where the Foo Fighters, they purchased this gorgeous Neve console from Sound City

and they brought it back to their studio and installed it.

Well, that that's a console that's full of transformers.

And the reason that people like those

transformers is because they actually have a sound.

The sound produces a type of character that's

that's really desirable for a lot of people.

Same thing as a bass player.

You know this guitar players, you know, they're always looking for the tube amps.

And, you know, one of the things that about tube amps for guitarists is sure the tubes

do have a sound and that's a big part of it.

But what people a lot of times don't even

realize is that more than half of the sound that they're getting, more than half

of the reason they like that amp is because of the transformers themselves before it

even gets to the tubes, goes to these transformers.

And these transformers have a way of just taking the audio and.

You know, they make it sound like it's just bursting with frequency and sound.

It's just so rich and it's like it's like your cup is overflowing.

You know, it's like full of character and vibe.

And, you know, that's why people like

transformers a lot of times in our in our industry for the pro audio folks that are

actually producing music and they're going out and buying preamps.

Well, it's always about the transformers that are used and this and that.

And

that's why people love the big large format consoles.

They say, oh, I want to get that Neve sound.

Well, what was that Neve sound?

You know, more than half of it was the transformers.

You know, it was like that's such a big part of the whole thing.

And you can use transformers a lot of different ways.

For example, for a DI, if you're taking an instrument into your preamp,

instrument has what we call a very high impedance.

And you have to step that down to something low because microphones have a very low

impedance and what impedance is, is kind of that's a whole nother thing.

That's why we made the Cloud Lifter Z is to

not to get technical and mathy about the whole thing, but to just be able to turn

the knob until it sounds right by using impedance to your advantage.

And.

You know, I guess what I'm really getting

into here is that the Cloud Lifter X,

what we've done with this is we custom designed a transformer with Dave

Gehran over at Cinemag, it's wound right over here in in Canoga Park,

California, just about 500 miles away here.

And.

It's.

It had to be good enough for a cloud.

It had to be like.

You know, it had to really knock our socks off.

And what we've done with this is we've created a very large bandwidth transformer.