Introducing you to Peter Enis, my new cheap 32bit floating point field recorder.

Actually I haven't used 32bit float ADCs at all so far. In theory, these have a dynamic range of around 1680dB.

Yet 24bit int has a dynamic range of 144dB and to my knowledge there is no audio interface / ADC that actually provides this range. Because very quiet signals will drown in preamp noise and the mud of low integer resolution, while very loud signals will clip the converters.

32bit float audio as a data format could solve this, as very quiet and very loud signals all have the same precision, yet I doubt physics allows preamps with a noise floor at -1680dB.

So how are these cheap recorders doing the trick with the actual dynamic range? I'd really love to know.

The promise is obvious: No gain control needed, just run and gun, and it will never ever go into clipping.

I used to do #FieldRecording long time ago; https://freesound.org/people/DrNI/

#ZoomM3 #ZoomRecorder #Zoom #Recorder #Tontechnik #Atmoaufnahme #Audioengineering