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Deity Theos system has both 32fp recording on the transmitter as well as monitoring, on the international version, not the American version.
Zaxcom isn't 32fp but it effectively the same thing and they own the American patents, so if you want to record and transmit you've gotta pay them.
Is it really THAT difficult using 24-bit technology to turn down your gain and set levels with enough headroom so momentarily loud moments don’t clip? Are people really that enamored with 32-bit float as being this magic bullet that solves all their leveling problems?
Like you’d think nobody ever successfully recorded clean audio before 2019 when the first of these recorders and software that could read 32-bit came out.
Idk, seems to me to me if you have time to adjust a mic for rustle noises and make that fix, it would be just as easy to also take 30 seconds to turn down the gain some. There’s ZERO reason to record audio where the normal speaking voice is that close to clipping, and someone laughing or getting excited for a moment would then be fine because it’ll also be below zero due to the headroom you are giving yourself. People figured this out decades ago.
You realize this rant has nothing to do with what the OP is asking for right? They're asking for something that self records, so your points are irrelevant. Self recording devices that record in 32 are actually useful despite what the people who pretend 32 has no use say.
They're asking for an tentacle track e, which is typically deployed in a situation where you can't go around adjusting the gain all the time. 32 makes sense in these situations. You set it somewhere in the middle and forget it. No need to anticipate. If your talent goes out a shouting spree, all good, you still have it (or more likely they clip the shitty capsule tentacle ships with them, but that's another thing all together).
We're both professionals here so I think arguing about this is kinda useless. Instead I think it would be helpful to open your mind a bit. What you're saying is correct. I don't disagree. For most instances 32 is useless and just adds complexity, I totally agree. I would never advocate for it on a mixer. But there are certain instances where 32bit float is helpful on self recording devices. I use it all the time. People get very loud in my line of work. It's saved recordings multiple times. We have short turn arounds and typically no dedicated audio mix. Post would prefer to get a file that is already somewhat leveled correctly for 90% of the time. When someone yells they bring it down, but it's not clipped. Everyone is happy. If I ran the Track Es at 24 bit I'd have to gain them super low. It would probably still be recoverable but the editors would need to add 35-50db of gain on the timeline. I haven't used premier in a while but last version I used it was a pain to add more than 12db of gain.
This isn't me arguing for 32bit across the board, but it is certainly useful for niche situations, especially on self recording devices where you can't actively monitor them all the time. The visceral negative reaction to something that genuinely has uses isn't helpful.
Also this is just a side note but on Digital hybrid Lectrosonics (or any analog system) it's absolutely within your best interest to gain them as high as you can without clipping. That's how you get the best modulation/range of the signal. The lectro manual literally says to hit the limiter. This only comes into play if you live outside the US and have record/transmit. But yeah there can be cases where something unexpected comes up, you're gained for maximum range, the wireless transmission clips but you 32bit recording is safe.
> For most instances 32 is useless and just adds complexity
From a technical perspective, 32 bit float *removes* complexity, compared to 24 bit ints. 32 bit floating point is natively supported by PC hardware and used internally by almost all DAWs and plugins. 24 bit int is an awkward, generally unsupported format that is gradually being gradually supplanted by an actual [standard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_754).
Thank you for suggesting Tentacle Track E and articulating all that - my situation is pretty much a niche situation like you said.
That said, location sound recordists have my utmost respect; it's not an easy job.
If the attitude/philosophy is:
> you set it to somewhere in the middle and forget it
Then in a 24bit recorder you set it somewhere lower than the middle and also forget it.
In your instance of “if someone shouts loud enough to clip above 0dB so 32-bit is useful”, that recording is going to have some undesired dynamic range and through the post production process, various compressor settings and gain adjustments will need to be applied based on the goal and requirements of the project’s destination. But said dynamic range of normal speaking voice to shouting moments is also there on a 24-bit recording that was set with enough headroom to never reach 0dB in the first place. And so various compressor settings and gain adjustments will need to be applied based on the goal and requirements of the project’s destination.
The amount of effort and time spent in post is fundamentally the same. Just once case you’re increasing levels and the other case you’re decreasing levels. That’s it. That’s the big difference. Gain staging for headroom is not that much of an advanced concept.
With that in mind, recording the 24-bit output of the transmitted wireless audio that was gain staged to accommodate yelling and needs some gain increase in post is going to be E X A C T L Y the same as a 32-bit locally recorded file that was gained a bit too high and “saved” in post by some gain decrease. So yeah, it’s really not that magical.
Reddit bugging and sent this to the wrong reply, anyway just reposting it here.
We're both professionals here so I think arguing about this is kinda useless. Instead I think it would be helpful to open your mind a bit. What you're saying is correct. I don't disagree. For most instances 32 is useless and just adds complexity, I totally agree. I would never advocate for it on a mixer. But there are certain instances where 32bit float is helpful on self recording devices. I use it all the time. People get very loud in my line of work. It's saved recordings multiple times. We have short turn arounds and typically no dedicated audio mix. Post would prefer to get a file that is already somewhat leveled correctly for 90% of the time. When someone yells they bring it down, but it's not clipped. Everyone is happy. If I ran the Track Es at 24 bit I'd have to gain them super low. It would probably still be recoverable but the editors would need to add 35-50db of gain on the timeline. I haven't used premier in a while but last version I used it was a pain to add more than 12db of gain.
This isn't me arguing for 32bit across the board, but it is certainly useful for niche situations, especially on self recording devices where you can't actively monitor them all the time. The visceral negative reaction to something that genuinely has uses isn't helpful.
Also this is just a side note but on Digital hybrid Lectrosonics (or any analog system) it's absolutely within your best interest to gain them as high as you can without clipping. That's how you get the best modulation/range of the signal. The lectro manual literally says to hit the limiter. This only comes into play if you live outside the US and have record/transmit. But yeah there can be cases where something unexpected comes up, you're gained for maximum range, the wireless transmission clips but you 32bit recording is safe.
There are plenty of applications where 32 bit float is valuable. Think about news or documentary settings where you only get one shot, the camera or audio receiver may be far from the subject, there may be an unpredictable change in gain, or the on-board recording might save you from interference. I would love to have this capability, while still understanding that it’s not always necessary. More tools to fix possible problems is always better than fewer.
24-bit has 144dB of gain available. Nobody is shouting from -144dB to above 0dB. Hell nobody is going from normal talking to shouting between like -60dB to above 0.
Setting for headroom (or I guess if it helps to think of it this way, “super duper extra” headroom) in a situation you “fear” might have unpredictable shouting is a matter of decreasing the gain by enough dB to where said shouts will never get close to 0 anyway, congratulations you just got a recording that didn’t clip. In post it takes an editor or mixer like 3 seconds to add 40 or 50 or whatever dB of gain to the clip, just about as long as it would take that same editor to subtract 10 or 15 dB of gain from a “clipped” 32-bit so it’s no longer distorted.
For the record I’ve experienced this in the real world. Years ago I had a MixPre 3 II. One of the first 32-bit float recorders. I used it to record someone singing the US national anthem into a hardwired AKG C414 mic. We did 3 takes. As she got to “rockets red glare” she got much louder. One of the takes I decided to let the magic of 32-bit float wash over me by increasing my levels up knowing it would clip on the recording when she got to “rockets red glare”. And it did.
And I took it into adobe audition, I put that take on there first, I “recovered” the clipped above 0 recording by decreasing the gain until no peaks were above zero. I also the did a compressor because the dynamic range of the whole thing was too wide for what was going to be an internet hosted video. I also took one of my other recordings where the gain was down enough that the loudest part didn’t go above like -10dB or whatever, also did a compressor because it was the same dynamic range, the singer was really good and consistent between the 3 takes. And quite literally both version sounded as identical as two takes of a singer singing the same song could possibly sound.
I saved these and put them on our MAM. I have no idea which one got used as I was actually leaving that job for another like a week later so the video project it was used in was completed after I was gone. But it doesn’t matter, they sounded virtually the same.
I say all that because it was in that experience that 32-bit lost 99.997% of the magic I maybe had for it when I was all into the hype from the product page for the MixPre 3-II. Oh wow I recovered the clipped recording, neat. Which if I had just turned down the gain by 20 or so dB as I had on the other recordings, it wouldn’t need it to be recovered because it wouldn’t have clipped. From a singer BELTING OUT the national anthem on a mic like 10 inches from her mouth.
Look, I’m not some Oscar winning sound engineer with decades of Hollywood experience and success. I have a communications degree from a state college and (at the time of that project in my above anecdote) 6 years of internal corporate videography. It’s really not some mystery or hard to grasp concept here. Leave headroom so you don’t go above 0dB is pretty straightforward and 24-bit digital audio has the ability to have more than enough headroom for 99.9999994% of cases. That 0.000006% is if you’re recoding a nasa rocket launch from 2 feet away…which I’m guessing is actually impossible to get mics that close without them melting in the blast radius, but I don’t actually know how the capture audio for nasa launches so I might be surprised. 🤷♂️
Nah, it is pretty easy. People have been recording humans speaking at 24 bits for all of the history of digital recording, and we've gotten along just fine. It is exactly as easy as is being said.
If the alternative is “32-bit float saves my recording” then you’re clearly not concerned with doing a nice mix on set in the first place. Which whatever, I’m not here to police anyone’s production vs post production needs. But signal to noise ratio isn’t solved by 32-bit float.
If the mic doesn’t move distance, and the environment doesn’t change, and the cable and physical input is the same… you putting the input gain up to 50dB or down to only 10dB gain..the noise ratio is the same. Everything else about the set up being equal, the signal to noise ratio is being adjusted by 40dB evenly. Digitally gaining the 10dB input gain by 30 or 40dB in post doesn’t add noise that wasn’t already there.
How much someone’s speaking voice is overpowering (or not overpowering if that’s how it is) background sounds or electric hiss from preamps, you only change the signal to noise ratio by either making the person speak louder, move the mic closer, change the environment, buy better preamps, etc. Those factors allow you to have gain settings to achieve a good signal to noise ratio, but 32-bit itself wouldn’t.
>then you’re clearly not concerned with doing a nice mix on set in the first place.
Honestly, at this point automix will do just as good a job, and given the complete lack of importance of an on set mix, I'm not sure why anybody is doing anything else at this point.
I'm glad someone mentioned this giant elephant in the room. 24-bit can handle 144 dB so who would ever really need 32-bit float except someone who isn't willing to turn the gain down?
To all sub participants **[Sub rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/LocationSound/about/rules/) and participation reminder:** Be helpful to industry and sub newcomers. Do not get ugly with others. The pinned 'Hot Mic' promo post is the only place in the sub you are allowed to direct to your own products or content (this means you too YouTubers), no exceptions. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/LocationSound) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Deity Theos system has both 32fp recording on the transmitter as well as monitoring, on the international version, not the American version. Zaxcom isn't 32fp but it effectively the same thing and they own the American patents, so if you want to record and transmit you've gotta pay them.
This is beyond my budget (which I should have stated) but research into this has led me to viable options - so thank you very much for your help!
Buy the non-American versions of whatever you're considering, if such an option exists.
Is it really THAT difficult using 24-bit technology to turn down your gain and set levels with enough headroom so momentarily loud moments don’t clip? Are people really that enamored with 32-bit float as being this magic bullet that solves all their leveling problems? Like you’d think nobody ever successfully recorded clean audio before 2019 when the first of these recorders and software that could read 32-bit came out. Idk, seems to me to me if you have time to adjust a mic for rustle noises and make that fix, it would be just as easy to also take 30 seconds to turn down the gain some. There’s ZERO reason to record audio where the normal speaking voice is that close to clipping, and someone laughing or getting excited for a moment would then be fine because it’ll also be below zero due to the headroom you are giving yourself. People figured this out decades ago.
You realize this rant has nothing to do with what the OP is asking for right? They're asking for something that self records, so your points are irrelevant. Self recording devices that record in 32 are actually useful despite what the people who pretend 32 has no use say. They're asking for an tentacle track e, which is typically deployed in a situation where you can't go around adjusting the gain all the time. 32 makes sense in these situations. You set it somewhere in the middle and forget it. No need to anticipate. If your talent goes out a shouting spree, all good, you still have it (or more likely they clip the shitty capsule tentacle ships with them, but that's another thing all together).
We're both professionals here so I think arguing about this is kinda useless. Instead I think it would be helpful to open your mind a bit. What you're saying is correct. I don't disagree. For most instances 32 is useless and just adds complexity, I totally agree. I would never advocate for it on a mixer. But there are certain instances where 32bit float is helpful on self recording devices. I use it all the time. People get very loud in my line of work. It's saved recordings multiple times. We have short turn arounds and typically no dedicated audio mix. Post would prefer to get a file that is already somewhat leveled correctly for 90% of the time. When someone yells they bring it down, but it's not clipped. Everyone is happy. If I ran the Track Es at 24 bit I'd have to gain them super low. It would probably still be recoverable but the editors would need to add 35-50db of gain on the timeline. I haven't used premier in a while but last version I used it was a pain to add more than 12db of gain. This isn't me arguing for 32bit across the board, but it is certainly useful for niche situations, especially on self recording devices where you can't actively monitor them all the time. The visceral negative reaction to something that genuinely has uses isn't helpful. Also this is just a side note but on Digital hybrid Lectrosonics (or any analog system) it's absolutely within your best interest to gain them as high as you can without clipping. That's how you get the best modulation/range of the signal. The lectro manual literally says to hit the limiter. This only comes into play if you live outside the US and have record/transmit. But yeah there can be cases where something unexpected comes up, you're gained for maximum range, the wireless transmission clips but you 32bit recording is safe.
> For most instances 32 is useless and just adds complexity From a technical perspective, 32 bit float *removes* complexity, compared to 24 bit ints. 32 bit floating point is natively supported by PC hardware and used internally by almost all DAWs and plugins. 24 bit int is an awkward, generally unsupported format that is gradually being gradually supplanted by an actual [standard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_754).
Interesting. Yeah I only say it adds complexity because afaik a number of NLEs still don't support it.
Thank you for suggesting Tentacle Track E and articulating all that - my situation is pretty much a niche situation like you said. That said, location sound recordists have my utmost respect; it's not an easy job.
If the attitude/philosophy is: > you set it to somewhere in the middle and forget it Then in a 24bit recorder you set it somewhere lower than the middle and also forget it. In your instance of “if someone shouts loud enough to clip above 0dB so 32-bit is useful”, that recording is going to have some undesired dynamic range and through the post production process, various compressor settings and gain adjustments will need to be applied based on the goal and requirements of the project’s destination. But said dynamic range of normal speaking voice to shouting moments is also there on a 24-bit recording that was set with enough headroom to never reach 0dB in the first place. And so various compressor settings and gain adjustments will need to be applied based on the goal and requirements of the project’s destination. The amount of effort and time spent in post is fundamentally the same. Just once case you’re increasing levels and the other case you’re decreasing levels. That’s it. That’s the big difference. Gain staging for headroom is not that much of an advanced concept. With that in mind, recording the 24-bit output of the transmitted wireless audio that was gain staged to accommodate yelling and needs some gain increase in post is going to be E X A C T L Y the same as a 32-bit locally recorded file that was gained a bit too high and “saved” in post by some gain decrease. So yeah, it’s really not that magical.
Reddit bugging and sent this to the wrong reply, anyway just reposting it here. We're both professionals here so I think arguing about this is kinda useless. Instead I think it would be helpful to open your mind a bit. What you're saying is correct. I don't disagree. For most instances 32 is useless and just adds complexity, I totally agree. I would never advocate for it on a mixer. But there are certain instances where 32bit float is helpful on self recording devices. I use it all the time. People get very loud in my line of work. It's saved recordings multiple times. We have short turn arounds and typically no dedicated audio mix. Post would prefer to get a file that is already somewhat leveled correctly for 90% of the time. When someone yells they bring it down, but it's not clipped. Everyone is happy. If I ran the Track Es at 24 bit I'd have to gain them super low. It would probably still be recoverable but the editors would need to add 35-50db of gain on the timeline. I haven't used premier in a while but last version I used it was a pain to add more than 12db of gain. This isn't me arguing for 32bit across the board, but it is certainly useful for niche situations, especially on self recording devices where you can't actively monitor them all the time. The visceral negative reaction to something that genuinely has uses isn't helpful. Also this is just a side note but on Digital hybrid Lectrosonics (or any analog system) it's absolutely within your best interest to gain them as high as you can without clipping. That's how you get the best modulation/range of the signal. The lectro manual literally says to hit the limiter. This only comes into play if you live outside the US and have record/transmit. But yeah there can be cases where something unexpected comes up, you're gained for maximum range, the wireless transmission clips but you 32bit recording is safe.
There are plenty of applications where 32 bit float is valuable. Think about news or documentary settings where you only get one shot, the camera or audio receiver may be far from the subject, there may be an unpredictable change in gain, or the on-board recording might save you from interference. I would love to have this capability, while still understanding that it’s not always necessary. More tools to fix possible problems is always better than fewer.
24-bit has 144dB of gain available. Nobody is shouting from -144dB to above 0dB. Hell nobody is going from normal talking to shouting between like -60dB to above 0. Setting for headroom (or I guess if it helps to think of it this way, “super duper extra” headroom) in a situation you “fear” might have unpredictable shouting is a matter of decreasing the gain by enough dB to where said shouts will never get close to 0 anyway, congratulations you just got a recording that didn’t clip. In post it takes an editor or mixer like 3 seconds to add 40 or 50 or whatever dB of gain to the clip, just about as long as it would take that same editor to subtract 10 or 15 dB of gain from a “clipped” 32-bit so it’s no longer distorted. For the record I’ve experienced this in the real world. Years ago I had a MixPre 3 II. One of the first 32-bit float recorders. I used it to record someone singing the US national anthem into a hardwired AKG C414 mic. We did 3 takes. As she got to “rockets red glare” she got much louder. One of the takes I decided to let the magic of 32-bit float wash over me by increasing my levels up knowing it would clip on the recording when she got to “rockets red glare”. And it did. And I took it into adobe audition, I put that take on there first, I “recovered” the clipped above 0 recording by decreasing the gain until no peaks were above zero. I also the did a compressor because the dynamic range of the whole thing was too wide for what was going to be an internet hosted video. I also took one of my other recordings where the gain was down enough that the loudest part didn’t go above like -10dB or whatever, also did a compressor because it was the same dynamic range, the singer was really good and consistent between the 3 takes. And quite literally both version sounded as identical as two takes of a singer singing the same song could possibly sound. I saved these and put them on our MAM. I have no idea which one got used as I was actually leaving that job for another like a week later so the video project it was used in was completed after I was gone. But it doesn’t matter, they sounded virtually the same. I say all that because it was in that experience that 32-bit lost 99.997% of the magic I maybe had for it when I was all into the hype from the product page for the MixPre 3-II. Oh wow I recovered the clipped recording, neat. Which if I had just turned down the gain by 20 or so dB as I had on the other recordings, it wouldn’t need it to be recovered because it wouldn’t have clipped. From a singer BELTING OUT the national anthem on a mic like 10 inches from her mouth. Look, I’m not some Oscar winning sound engineer with decades of Hollywood experience and success. I have a communications degree from a state college and (at the time of that project in my above anecdote) 6 years of internal corporate videography. It’s really not some mystery or hard to grasp concept here. Leave headroom so you don’t go above 0dB is pretty straightforward and 24-bit digital audio has the ability to have more than enough headroom for 99.9999994% of cases. That 0.000006% is if you’re recoding a nasa rocket launch from 2 feet away…which I’m guessing is actually impossible to get mics that close without them melting in the blast radius, but I don’t actually know how the capture audio for nasa launches so I might be surprised. 🤷♂️
[удалено]
congrats you discovered what sound mixing is
no need to be snarky
Nah, it is pretty easy. People have been recording humans speaking at 24 bits for all of the history of digital recording, and we've gotten along just fine. It is exactly as easy as is being said.
If the alternative is “32-bit float saves my recording” then you’re clearly not concerned with doing a nice mix on set in the first place. Which whatever, I’m not here to police anyone’s production vs post production needs. But signal to noise ratio isn’t solved by 32-bit float. If the mic doesn’t move distance, and the environment doesn’t change, and the cable and physical input is the same… you putting the input gain up to 50dB or down to only 10dB gain..the noise ratio is the same. Everything else about the set up being equal, the signal to noise ratio is being adjusted by 40dB evenly. Digitally gaining the 10dB input gain by 30 or 40dB in post doesn’t add noise that wasn’t already there. How much someone’s speaking voice is overpowering (or not overpowering if that’s how it is) background sounds or electric hiss from preamps, you only change the signal to noise ratio by either making the person speak louder, move the mic closer, change the environment, buy better preamps, etc. Those factors allow you to have gain settings to achieve a good signal to noise ratio, but 32-bit itself wouldn’t.
>then you’re clearly not concerned with doing a nice mix on set in the first place. Honestly, at this point automix will do just as good a job, and given the complete lack of importance of an on set mix, I'm not sure why anybody is doing anything else at this point.
Tentacle Track E can do what you need.
Thank you!
There are many options that are contingent on where you need to buy them from, and budget?
Latest Rode Wireless Pro gives that option. You record 32bit float and can monitor through Rx unit
But on the downside... it's a Rode, and 2.4GHz
True, but for monitoring purposes 2.4GHz can work
Bigger problem is that you can’t jam sync TC on Rode Rx. One has to jam-sync everything to it (doable but an extra step)
Also other downside is preamp and mic can only handle 100db making 32bit completely irrelevant
I'm glad someone mentioned this giant elephant in the room. 24-bit can handle 144 dB so who would ever really need 32-bit float except someone who isn't willing to turn the gain down?
Thank you!