There are 2^24 numbers you can get from 2^23 bits of mantissa plus sign... I don't have my IEEE dictionary to look it up at work. When I was weaned I thought the prof said "24 bits mantissa, 23 bits plus sign, and 8 exponent bits" but that was a long time ago. Quite possible my memory and/or his definition was wrong, not really relevant now.
A few years ago I was asked why we didn't have 64-bit ADCs since all the DSPs were moving to 64-bit words. I realized later I should have said that was a great idea for a research topic and written a proposal for it. The application was multi-GHz RF, so maybe an 8-bit converter with 56 bits of dither? I already had the 10+ GHz ADC...
One thing I remember from my Zoom H2 (now just use once in a blue moon for practice or to capture a tune I might transcribe later) was the AGC was on by default and that trashed the dynamic range of live recordings until I turned it off. No idea if that's changed for the newer models.
A few years ago I was asked why we didn't have 64-bit ADCs since all the DSPs were moving to 64-bit words. I realized later I should have said that was a great idea for a research topic and written a proposal for it. The application was multi-GHz RF, so maybe an 8-bit converter with 56 bits of dither? I already had the 10+ GHz ADC...
One thing I remember from my Zoom H2 (now just use once in a blue moon for practice or to capture a tune I might transcribe later) was the AGC was on by default and that trashed the dynamic range of live recordings until I turned it off. No idea if that's changed for the newer models.