> I will choose 32 bits over 24 any day when recording.

There's probably no point since your audio interface doesn't produce 32 bit audio anyway.

For transient formats it's another story: if a bit of audio gets re-printed multiple times with some processing between renders, then it's beneficial to store it in a DAW-native format (32/64 fp) to avoid quantization or multiple additions of dither noise. For recording you just waste space.

> Having something to store those files with a little bit of lossless compression is a welcome addition

You'd probably want to store 32/64 bit floating point, and WavPack works really well. On comparable formats it achieves ratios really on par with Flac.

My audio interface is a sound devices mixpre 10 which records 32 bits. It also has preamps with -133dbV noise figures.

In the practical sense what this means is that I have to be less careful with setting the gain. Typically when setting recording gain you want to go as high as possible so preamp/mic noise doesn't become an issue, but not so high that you are going into the limiter when something unexpectedly loud happens.

I often record in environments where unexpectedly loud things happen, so having a recorder that allows me to record at a lower level while still not gaining noise issues or loosing detail in the silent parts is a very welcome thing.

I understand where you're coming from and the supposed benefits of a higher dynamic range.

In my experience as a mix engineer working with music, recordings, when made proper, rarely use the full available dynamic range of 24 bits. Often I get tracks recorded too low due to incorrect gain staging. But maybe even more common is just a noisy recording. Poor mains wiring, the length of a recording chain, self-noise of various gear used all contribute to what usually amounts to noise levels much higher than -144dB. And, to be honest, in my line of work it rarely matters until it crosses the 16bit noise floor of -96dB.

What I suppose I mean by all of this and my previous posts is if you're not careful enough to fit into the higher portion of the available dynamic range of 144dB you're just adding more noise regardless of the format used, as in most cases the level of cumulative noise is higher than -144dB. YMMV, of course.

It's very unlikely your audio interface can actually record at 32 bit resolution.

https://www.mojo-audio.com/blog/the-24bit-delusion/

32bit or more makes sense for dsp and summing, and non-musical data storage. But your I/O is most likely not giving 32 bits

32-bit is common in field recordings, like with a Zoom (and there's reason to believe they can legitimately take advantage of it).

That's a bit different, as it's 32 bit floating point, not integer. 32 bit float is often used for summing and that's what's going on here. Those are done by having 2 (or more) parallel ADCs (usually 24 or 16 bit) with the input voltage scaled lower on each successive one, and then they are digitally re-scaled and mixed together using a 32 bit float format into a single stream (double that paragraph for stereo).

The big benefit from 32bit float is you can go "above" 0db, so your digital operations can't "clip" in the analog sense. I definitely see the benefits of 32 bit float hardware, especially for field recordings (zoom aren't lying, it does work). But it's a different format and the internals are relying on the integer based format and don't exceed 24 bit integers.

I was thinking flac 32 bits is float as well?

My sounddevices mixpre 10 records in 32 bits. Granted not all of those bits will be significant, but the preamps are good enough to take 24 bits to the limit.

32 bits are less critical to set the gain for (more headroom) and audio files are tiny anyways (compared to say, video). So in a practical sense I need to be less precise with setting the gain, or can record a bit more dynamic events. I am very happy with the results.

Sounddevices has a good explaination if you are curious: https://www.sounddevices.com/32-bit-float-files-explained/

> I will choose 32 bits over 24 any day

why?

Because if the recording goes past the clipping range for digital audio it still records the data and preserves it. 32bit recording has serious advantages because it’s much easier to record a hot input because digital clipping is not possible. You just need to pull the volume down on the recorded clip after the fact and there is no clipping.

You mean 32 bits float? This is 32 bits integer