What a great little "in-line" pre amp! I was honestly surprised at how clean the boost is.

Because I record all of my vocals in an untreated bedroom, I opt to use an SM58 to avoid capturing a lot of room noise the way a condenser mic would. To combat cranking the gain knob on my audio interface practically all the way up because dynamic mics are low-output, I looked at the DM1 and the Cloudlifter CL-1. While I can't speak to the quality of the CL-1 first hand, what made me choose the DM1 is that it provides 28 dB of clean gain as opposed to the CL-1's 25 dB, the DM1 requires only one XLR cable to connect to the microphone and signal processor because it can plug directly into either while the CL-1 needs two cables, and the DM1 costs $ less.

I've used it for about one month now, having already recorded vocals for two different songs and lending my set-up to my brother who needed to record voice-overs for a radio class at our college. Both of us are satisfied with our recordings! I ran a test recording with and without the DM1 test upon unboxing, and sure enough, it does exactly what it says. Using the DM1, I now only have to turn my gain knob about halfway of it's full 52 dB Gain Control range. To me, the best part is that there's no coloring on the recording when using this in-line preamp. Plus the XLR pins fit my mic very snugly. Go buy one!

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