Why would you need one of the microphone boosters? If you have an extremely noisy preamp like the UR22mkII, not the noisiest, but pretty darn noisy. Or if you have a microphone that is insanely gain hungry like the SM7B as your preamp does not have sufficient gain to drive it to a level that you need it to be at. Here we review the 3 best mic gain.
Microphone Boosters Reviews
To hear how each device sounds, click on the video below (testing from 7.00 minute)
Cloudlifter CL-1 – Best For Clean Sound
The Cloudlifter CL-1 the cloud lifter is designed to add clean and transparent gain to your recording, meaning it doesn’t add any additional noise and doesn’t change the tone of the microphone.
Packaging
Opened it up and it comes with a user guide and it shows you how to set it up. Also, gives you the user registration: it’s fairly simple you can go into their website, get it all registered, and then you’re set so that way it covers the warranty on it. And of course, it comes with the cl1 which is you know just a small little blue box and fairly innocuous.
It really doesn’t take up too much room so if you happen to have a pretty tight desk space that you’re working with you can anticipate that this is not going to be eating up a lot of real estate on your desktop. And they actually included a cloudlifter magnet.
Specification
- In-Line Accessory Type: Pre-Amplifier
- Input / Output Level Input: Mic Level
- Output: Mic Level
- Number of Channels: 1
- Gain: +25 dB (3-Kilohm Load)
- Controls None
Useful for a Variety of Applications
Use with
- noisy or low-gain preamps
- mixers/preamps that negatively impact the sound at higher gain settings
- low-output dynamic microphones and ribbons
- Mic softer sound sources such as acoustic instruments and voice
- Use for long cable runs
Conclusion
This is the best option for podcasters, sound makers, etc. if you need clean sound with boosting of gain. Very easy to use, just and plug and adore of the new level of your microphone sound.
- Plug&Play
- Compatible with tube, battery, or power-supply-driven microphones
- Significantly cleaner signal
- Perfect for Youtube Podcasters
- Offers only 25 dB of gain
the Soyuz – Top For Boosting Your Gain
The launcher the Soyuz is not necessarily designed to offer clean gain, or even be transparent. It is designed to add a vintage character to your recording with all of that stuff out of the way.
Packaging
You’re going to get this zipper storage bag thingy, some QA cards, and some stickers. Then as far as the build quality, it actually feels like an absolute tank. It has an all-metal chassis that feels insanely durable. On one side you will find the male XLR port on the other you will find a locking female XLR port and on the bottom, you will find four rubberized feet to keep it from sliding around.
Specification
Then as far as the specs this preamp offers a frequency response of 10 hertz to 20 kilohertz a gain boost of around 26 decibels, an impedance of One kiloohm, and a phantom power requirement of plus 48 volts.
This little box seems to do exactly what it is advertised to do. And at least so we are trying to do something a little bit different with their little magic box. And first up in terms of pros, the launcher does offer a full plus 26 dB of gain, the build quality of this thing is also insane, it feels like it could really take a beating. Also, I found the roll-off and the upper frequencies to be rather pleasing and offer a much smoother sound on more aggressive and harsher sound sources like an overly distorted guitar.
But then in terms of cons, if you are just looking for plus 26 dB of transparent gain, you are not going to find it here. And also with a price tag of $200. I think they are really limiting the potential for this device. Because I know a lot of people have already found the Cloudlifter CL-1 to be a bit too expensive at $150.
Does it improve the noise floor?
Now let’s go ahead and see if the Soyuz launcher is able to improve the noise floor of a recording going through a somewhat noisy preamp. Quick note: I did make sure that the levels were matched as close as I could possibly make them prior to measuring the noise floor.
Final Words
It’s really hard to come up with anything to say about these really simple preamps but it offers you 26 dB of gain, it did improve the noise floor of the UR22 mark two, which is not the cleanest preamp, and it does color your audio by rolling off a little bit of those higher frequencies above five kilohertz and to now what I recommend to this device, both yes and no. It boosts your gain and it colors your audio. If that is what you were looking for and you want to have a little bit more of a vintage characteristic to your recording, then absolutely I would recommend it.
- Colors your audio and gives vintage notes
- Boosts your gain.
- You can use it for guitar or podcast audio
- Compact and lightweight.
- Offers only 26 dB of gain
- Price tag $200
sE Electronics DM1 – Top Cheap Boosting Sound Solution
The topic of today’s review is the sE Electronics DM1 microphone preamp, Dynamite. A ubiquitous story is when we work with passive microphones, whether tape or dynamic, and we are sorely lacking in volume. What do we do in this case? We rush to the remote control, preamp, or sound card and start to twist the volume and sensitivity to madness. Yes, there is no other way out.
But along with this, we inevitably get a very considerable portion. Unnecessary noise in the form of electrical and radio frequency interference. And this, of course, makes the picture with the sound unpleasant and deprives us of the working mood. But as it turned out, there is still a completely painless way out. And here is one of them.
Packaging
DM1 Dynamite preamp. Developed by sE Electronics specialists. Packed in a rugged all-metal case with a premium finish, this little wonder can boost your microphone by an additional 28 decibels, while eliminating the hum, noise, and interference.
Thanks to modern technology class A electronics and high-quality transistors inside this baby.
What You Should Know Before Purchasing
Now the main points that you need to know about if you decide to buy this toy.
- First. For this preamp to work, it needs to be given 48 volts. That is, if you turn it on in the remote control
or card without phantom power, alas, nothing will work. - Second. He needs food. But he, unfortunately, does not transmit power to the microphone. It follows
that with the condenser and active tape microphones, it will not be possible to use it. - And the third. However, for the result from the preamp operation to be, it is recommended to connect it directly to
the microphone output.
Of course, if necessary, you can use a cable between the microphone and the device, but at the same time, you
need to know that the shorter the cable, the higher the efficiency.
Specification
A few words about the parameters. The frequency range in which Dynamite is able to work, from 10 to 120 thousand hertz. The connector is a gold-plated three-pin XLR; the length is almost 10 centimeters, the weight is 80 grams. Let me remind you again: the power supply is 48 volts, the gain is 28 decibels.
Which microphones are perfect for using with DM1?
The high popularity of using such a device on demand can be observed in the example of such microphones as Shure SM7B, Rode Broadcaster, Audio-Technica BP40. We also found an instance that requires a severe level increase for full-fledged work – this is the sE Electronics V7.
Testing
50 decibels of the soundcard. This level is optimal, but it is necessary to understand that with such an amplification, large noises may appear. In this case, I am one hundred percent saved by our sound card. Well, now it’s all the same with Dynamite. That is, plus the 28 decibels that are mentioned about this preamp, this is the actual truth.
Conclusion
DM1 is the perfect way to amplify the signal from the microphone, reduce the chance of interference and provide a significantly improved level without additional noise. And also, thanks to the lowest output impedance in its class, this model allows you to lay long cable lines while reducing sensitivity to RF interference, hum, and noise. In a word, the thing is beneficial and high-quality. And therefore, it is recognized as suitable, and its cost simply has no right to cause anyone any indignation.
- Cheap Solution
- Offers 28 dB of gain as advertised
- Price tag $100
- Not so clear sound (vs. Cloudlifter CL-1 or the Soyuz)
- Can’t use with condenser and active tape microphones
- Need card with phantom power
How to increase the output level microphone in Windows 10?
Do you need to increase the output level of your microphone in Windows 10 for free and make it louder? This is the tutorial for you.
Control panel
Fortunately for you, it’s pretty simple. Let’s get the control panel; you get the control panel and just click the Windows key. And you search for a control panel, launch that excellent control panel.
Here, we have something called sound click on the sound. There we have the beautiful sound tap. Here we have recording devices. And you can see we have different recording devices.
Properties
Let’s right-click this one and click Properties. This is one microphone. And you might have many microphones here.
You want to make sure that you have show disabled devices and Show disconnected devices check. Because sometimes a thing is disabled. And maybe this is the microphone you actually want to use. That would be terrible. And if this is the microphone you want to use, click Enable if you’re unsure, and enable them all. And let’s check; you can tap the microphone you want to use and see which one of these reacts the most.
Properties >> Levels
You can also go like this, and you can click Properties you can pick into the lesson; you can check this list and click Apply. And now you can listen to this. Amazing. Here we have some sliders. Now, this is a microphone we don’t want to use. But you can see here we have a slider that we’re going to increase and lower the sound. On this thing here, you can click this one, and you see the sound disappears completely; you can click it again, and it comes back. Here we have a microphone boost—a fantastic area of the level.
What you might notice is that this first slider sets the sensitivity of your microphone. So if you have a lot of background noise, you might want to keep this a little lower, like I don’t know 26, and then you boost the microphone instead. As you can hear, we have a lot of less background noise but still better volume. However, if you have real trouble even hearing anything, you might want to keep them both to the max. But you might get some distortion issues and tired of listening to this thing, and you just turn it off.
Now your built-in microphone for your like PC isn’t excellent. So set that to see the quality. If you have a perfect mic, you might have a tire, but it’s probably not needed. Some programs like Skype or other communication applications might have problems watching what bitrate you have; if you have any compatibility problem with any program set, see the quality. If some programs like Skype or teams do annoying things to your sound and sound doesn’t work, uncheck these two boxes and click
Apply, then it might have solved the problem for you. But then you need to change the sound settings here, of course. So that was that thing. And of course, if I go to my real microphone here, as it has much better sound, it only has one slider here. So if I increase this, you can probably hear me a lot better now. But you also hear more of the background noise as you hear. So then we might want to keep this a little bit lower down. But now, you might think the volume is a little bit too low. For my microphone, I find it’s best between 75 and 85.
Need More? Download Equalizer
So I never keep this at 100 because then we get some distortion issues. And then we’ll just click apply and OK. If this still doesn’t get you to the sound level you want to reach, we might need some heavy artillery. Go to the web page and download Equalizer APO. Here we have an equalizer API to click download and install this thing.
In this little configuration menu, you need to set for which device API needs to be installed. I will select my other microphone like that, and then just click OK. And there we could see if you want if you need to rerun it.
Alright, and then you need to reboot the computer. Alright, the computer is restarted. Now you need to launch the equalizer, which is the configuration editor. Let’s close this down, and we checked the device here, which we go to capture the device.
Conclusion
Alright, and here we have something called preamp unique. And what we want to do is make it active. And then we can move like this. So we can preamp it like that, which we can notice if we check the listen to this device. We can go here, and we can hear that if we do preamp here, and we can preamp it up to an uncomfortable level. So, of course, I want to do a level four boost, but of course, if we go to levels, Max these out, and use this preamp and Max that out, you’ll get high volume from your microphone. So that’s basically how to do it. And remember that this program is called “Configuration editor” when you need to launch it.