Recording - August 2017 - 60

The Simply Sound
Company
SS-1 Microphone
Preamp
Reviews By Mike Metlay
The idea of an inline mic level booster has been around for quite
a while, but the currently popular crop can be traced back to the
Royer Labs R-122. Conventional ribbon mics will provide different
timbres depending on the impedance of the preamps they are
connected to, and need a lot of clean gain to work well-more
gain than some preamps can provide. David Royer came up with
the idea of a self-contained, phantom-powered circuit that would
provide that gain while delivering an output impedance that would
remain optimized for the ribbon motor, no matter what preamp was
connected to it. This became the built-in head amp of the R-122, the
world's first (and now widely imitated) active ribbon mic.
Soon after that, Cloud Microphones came up with the idea
of the Cloudlifter, an inline device that could provide the same
function for any passive ribbon mic, and it wasn't long before
users realized that this same combination of gain and
impedance matching could do wonders for low-output
dynamic mics as well. The Cloudlifter and its ilk gave an exciting
new life to mics like the Shure SM7B, as well as offering great
flexibility to pretty much every ribbon mic out there.
Fast forward to 2017, and there are a variety of such
products out there from well-established makers. Cloud has a
whole lineup of Cloudlifters with added features, and Radial
Engineering recently introduced the road-tough McBoost. So
what would draw a user's attention to the SS-1 from Utahbased startup The Simply Sound Company?
First, the SS-1 is very easy to use. It's a solidly made inline unit
with four Class-A matched JFETs (Junction Field Effect Transistors)
that requires phantom power to operate, and it pairs well with all
kinds of non-phantom-powered mics to provide 25 dB of clean
gain into a 3 kΩ input impedance. There are no controls at all;
just plug it into a preamp or audio interface, plug in a mic, turn
on phantom power, and you're in business.

Focusrite

iTrack One Pre
Focusrite's been in the business of providing microphones with
impeccable front-end electronics for many years; elsewhere in
60

RECORDING August 2017

$99.99; simplysound.co
Second, the SS-1 sounds great. I had a chance to test it out
on a number of mics, and it worked well with all of them, but I
want to make special mention of my very first mic: a beat-up and
beloved old Shure SM57 that has served me well for decades.
I replaced the large-diaphragm condenser mic that I use for my
radio show with the SM57 and SS-1, and was surprised at how
rich, clear, and detailed my voice sounded. I was able to back
off on a lot of the corrective EQ that I usually use on my voice,
and got a full and rounded tone that my audience really enjoyed.
Last but not least, the SS-1 is highly affordable. It usually
sells for under a hundred dollars, with introductory discounts
to that already low price sometimes on offer, and all units
come with a 30-day money back guarantee.
Beginning recordists, podcasters, audio and video bloggers,
and other folks who have started their mic lockers with
dynamic or inexpensive ribbon mics have a way to dramatically
improve the quality of those mics for very little money, and
more experienced engineers willing to sacrifice the fancier
features of competing models have a very manageable point
of entry for this technology, one that effectively turns every
ribbon and dynamic mic they own into two mics with significantly
different timbres.
This little box is an impressive first product for the folks at
The Simply Sound Company, and we can't wait to see what
they come up with next.

this issue, we discuss the Scarlett OctoPre Dynamic 8-channel
preamp, and we've featured lots of other Focusrite preamps in
our pages. The iTrack One Pre, though, is something special.
Focusrite has never made another preamp like this one before,
and we're pretty sure no one else has, either.
The iTrack One Pre is intended for only one purpose:
to capture audio on an iOS device at the highest possible

http://www.simplysound.co

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