3 ms·

Whats your opinion on f32, useful or gimmick?

• artine 2y ago
  (Not the OP) I use my Zoom F3 (which is a 32-bit float recorder) for field recordings for hobby music production. I'm not a professional in any respect. But I've found f32 to be incredibly useful because it allows me to very spontaneously capture unexpected sounds with little to no setup or preparation. In fact, sometimes I even forego monitoring in favor of just quickly getting out the recorder and microphones and then hitting record -- since I don't have to fiddle with gain, I know that I can capture something usable rather than missing the opportunity altogether. When I have time to prepare a recording and it's not going to have a crazy amount of dynamic range, then sure, f32 isn't a make-or-break feature, and needing to do post-processing 100% of the time before the audio is usable in non-f32 contexts could be seen as a drawback. But for my use cases, absolutely useful and worthwhile.
  • mikae1 2y ago
    As you say, f32 requires post-processing. What is the most minimal post-processing needed?
    • skvmb 2y ago
      For me personally, the minimum is 'normalization.'
• scott01 2y ago
  There's a problem with f32 due to devices using two ADCs to implement it. Essentially, there's certain volume threshold when device switches DACs, and it's audible. If you record sources with varying loudness, you may see noise floor raising around loud bursts, and typical noise suppression tools won't work on files like this (there was a video or a blog post, I can't recall where I saw this). At least this is how Zoom implemented f32, don't know about Sound Devices.
  • MrBuddyCasino 2y ago
    I was wondering how they avoid being swamped by analog noise in the lower ranges with such a high dynamic range. I suppose they use different gains per DAC and map that to the respective dynamic ranges of the f32 signal?
    • scott01 2y ago
      To my understanding, yes, but I'm just a hobbyist.