How the problem appeared
In the room, everyone sounds fine. On Zoom/Teams, the in-room voices are faint, so someone turns the gain up and the hiss comes up with it.
Problem
A dynamic mic (or handheld) feeding a laptop interface or mixer needs more clean gain than the system can provide without adding noise.
Fix
Put a Cloudlifter between the mic and the preamp/interface so you get the level you need without living at the noisy top end of the gain knob. Then set your preamp gain back to a normal range and re-check levels.
Mic → Cloudlifter → Interface/Mixer (phantom power +48V ON) → Computer/Stream
Note: Cloudlifters work with passive dynamic and passive ribbon microphones. They are not compatible with condenser microphones that require phantom power through their XLR connection.
Choose your Cloudlifter
If you want the simplest setup: use the CL-25 Mini. It's the quickest "one connection" way to add clean gain. With the CL-25 Mini, it plugs directly onto the mic's XLR output, and your single XLR cable connects from the CL-25 Mini to the interface or mixer.
If you already own a Cloudlifter: the CL-1, CL-2, and CL-4 do the same job (clean mic activation). They use the standard inline connection in your mic chain. The CL-2 is a good fit if you're running a room mic and a presenter mic on two separate channels.
Anecdote
"We stopped 'chasing volume' and suddenly the whole meeting sounded calmer and clearer — and nobody complained about hiss anymore."
FAQs
Does my interface or mixer need to supply phantom power? Yes. The Cloudlifter requires +48V phantom power from your interface or mixer to operate. Enable phantom power on the channel the Cloudlifter is plugged into. The Cloudlifter uses that phantom power to provide up to +25dB of clean gain — without it, no signal passes.
