Paul White takes a look at the latest Cloudlifter from cloud Microphones:
"We’ve reviewed a number of ‘blue box’ Cloudlifter ‘mic activators’ before, and we’ve always been impressed by how they manage to add so much clean gain when placed after dynamic mics, particularly ribbon models. Power for these active boxes comes from the phantom power source of the mic input to which the Cloudlifter is connected, and on the simplest models there are no controls at all — you just plug in and it works. Note that no phantom power is passed through to the input, so Cloudlifters can only be used with dynamic microphones or mics that have their own power source. A later version of the Cloudlifter added variable impedance, and the same circuity is apparently used in the Cloudlifter Zi but with the addition of a high-impedance, transformer-coupled instrument input, which is well-suited to passive guitar and bass pickups but also electronic keyboards."
