iternabe "...mitigate high noise floor in your recorder..."
Is this commonly perceived as a faint white noise or hum?
32 bit float: Zoom H1essential
pseudonym58 Yes. And it is generated by the circuit inside the field recorder. When you change mic level, the amplitude of this noise is not changed.
So, let's say your recorder has a white noise of -45 dBFS. If you set your mic level very low and the real sound recorded averages -35 to -40 dBFS, then the white noise will be quite audible relative to real sound. If you set your mic level high so that real sound is recorded to be -12 to -6 dBFS, then the white noise (still -45 dB) become almost inaudible relatively.
In field recording of nature sound, this become a problem because you can turn up the mic level to max, and the recorded sound still won't be loud enough to overpower the white noise in the recorder. TASCAM field recorders are notorious for this problem. Zoom might be slightly better. SONY is much better hands down, but they are also many times more expensive for this reason.
keff rogerch I used Audacity to make the audio recording presented to the PT recital and find it straight forward to use. On the other hand I can't get GarageBand to record as it seems it is not receiving input from an external microphone. In the end I discovered that my (cell) phone records reasonable quality audio as well as making the video image
Thanks @keff! I don’t use GarageBand for recording. The zoom recorders record to SD cards. I import the recordings from SD and use GarageBand to trim the recordings and convert to MP3
iternabe The beauty of the H1essential, and I believe float 32 recorders in general, is that there is no gain setting on the recorder. It has such a huge dynamic range that gain is unnecessary. The trade off, as I discovered, is that the output level needs to be adjusted at playback time. A level still must be specified, but after the recording not during the recording.
pseudonym58 iternabe Thanks for the suggestions about setting gain on the H4n Pro. With more experience I might learn how to more effectively manage the gain setting on the H4n Pro. If the H1essential works out I won’t have to!
It feels like there should be a 'technical' sub-forum/area for these sorts of discussions (e.g. recording, creating videos, sound-proofing, etc.). Not that this isn't super helpful, more that it would be great to have a defined place to go to find information.
TLH21 Yeah I thought about that when picking a forum to post in. I chose Acoustic pianos because it seems to me that recording using an external recorder applies more to acoustic pianos than digital pianos. I know some players record their digital pianos with external recorders rather than directly from line out or directly to digital so it does apply there as well.
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rogerch Since you’ve got extra channels on the H4, you could use a trick common in video shooting. Set channels 1 & 2 to your optimal record levels. Then feed the same signals into channels 3 & 4, but set the record levels lower, maybe 6-10dB less. That’s your insurance in case something peaks unexpectedly, you change to those tracks in the final mix.
But yeah, I’ve switched to 32bit float myself, wonderful thing to preserve both loud and quiet.
Perpetual Beginner, Yamaha P115
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The precision of floating point arithmetic and the size of the quanta used for digitization are separate design decisions.
If 24-bit audio is clipping, it is not due limitations in dynamic range, but due to setting the gain too high. At 24 bits can set it much lower without concern for running out of dynamic range at the low end, and then set it at say -3dB from peak during the mastering process.
Human hearing has up to about 20 bits of dynamic range, from a pin drop to a 747 taking off at close range. 24 bits provides 16x that amount.
What is true is that it is worth recording at a larger quantum size than the size for the final distribution. This provides extra padding to reduce digital noise by reducing floating point round-off errors. Dither down to the desired quantization as the final mastering step.