Master the Zoom F6 Track Knobs? How to set Trim, Gain, Rec and Reference Level? 

Honestly, this is such a good tutorial that Zoom should feature it on their own channel with a proper reference to your channel. Wonderfully done. Thank you.

Thank you for this video. Just three important clarifications in order any confision to be avoided. (1) These 6 knobs are not signal gain controls on either 16-bit, 24-bit or 32-bit recordings - by design these are ALWAYS audio mix faders and have nothing to do with the input signals! F6 is a professional-grade device and there are more similarities between F6 and L-12 as a digital mixer, for example, rather than F6 and H5 or H6 as a handy recorder. So on 16-bit and 24-bit the true "gain" is called "trim" (mentioned in your video), and on 32-bit this "trim" is disabled (no gain control), but still the audio mix faders are fully opeational, as expected. (2) I will highly recommend to control this device remotly via bluetooth. You will find out that you can control the gains and the audio faders with no need to touch the knobs, exactly as a digital mixer where F6's LR track works as a Master-bus. (3) And last but not least, do what you want but keep in mind that Line-out doesn't support ultra-high audio levels produced by the 32-bit recording! Fortunatly, it has a dedicated audio limiter (compressor) with soft and hard "knee" modes that can be used to avoid the audio clippings. Hope this helps...

This is exactly what I needed. Great video!

Well done, Chris! Thumbs up!

Very helpful, thank you!

Big thanks - just get F6 and your video was big help:)

This is exactly the tutorial I’ve been looking for. I had some confusion between 24 and 32, but you just solved my problems. Thank you sir!

Great video, just what I needed! I've only had the F6 for a few days now and this video really helped me to make sense of this somewhat confusing part. Coming from an H4n Pro, the F6 is a major step up and there's alot to get my head around.

Thanks so much - this has cleared up a lot of confusion

this is great. thanks for the breakdown!

Very informative - thank you.

thanks for clarification!

Thank you for this.

Thank you so much for this video

If ZOOM does not listen to you or Rebel Tech's suggestions for future firmware upgrades then I've lost all hope in ZOOM. I have no idea how you translate the Zoom menu into such a crystal clear video tutorial. Great job and THANKS.

Thank you for explaining the track knobs in 32bit. I just picked up the F6 after using the F3 for the past year or so and was a little confused on what was going on.

I agree. Perhaps even if the knobs change to a fader knob when you are within the PFL settings or something. I'm not too keen on setting the trim with the buttons.

Great ! Thanks!

Great video bud! I love the Zoom F6, it's one my favorite pieces of gear. I was thinking about the next potential update, being 1.7, and there are some things that they should address. 1) Sending the audio signal to the app via BT (If that is even possible) 2) As you said, having the option to change the fader knob to a gain knob in all modes 3) Personally a 6 second pre roll in 96Khz It's not much, and this device it pretty much perfect, but I feel it needs some tweaking. I'll be putting some new Zoom F6 video up soon as well (I know shocker lol). I think this topic of a 1.7 update could be a good video. I also want to go into my settings I had during the short film I helped make a couple of weeks ago. Keep up the great work!

Thank you so much for this explanation! I was going crazy at a shoot yesterday trying to figure out why the knob wouldn’t adjust my gain in 24 bit mode!

Thanks I learned a lot! What I have learned using the F6 to record a line level from a DJ speaker is that it is best to use an attenuator because there is no way to set the levels in 32 bit float. So in my old recorders I could turn down the incoming signal, with 32 bit float you really need to attenuate the signal before it even comes into the recorder, otherwise, you get clipping. So for now I will have an XLR form the DJ and have a splitter XLR cable. One channel will be normal without an attenuator, the other channel I will have the attenuator so when loud music is played I don't get a blown out recording. I don't want both channels to be attenuated because when people do normal talking it would record too low. This way I also don't need to monitor it. No matter what happens I will have the best recording.

Excellent.

wow your light is really bright

Thanks for the great explanation! I think one of the things I am struggling with is understanding how, in 32 bit mode, there is no trim but the fader adjust the gain. If we don’t need trim because we have all of this dynamic range, why do we need a gain function which affects the recorded values?

Sehr gutes Video 👍 Um ehrlich zu sein wusste ich gar nicht genau, dass man die Funktion der Regler umstellen kann 😇

Hey man great Tutorial 💪🏻 Can you show is the different Files in Audition of another Software?? Thx

Thank you for this video. What about have a quick access to switching between trim-role and mix-role for these buttons ? Like : "hold the PFL button 1second to toggle between thesse modes" ? That would be a game changer, compared to the actual menu browsing !

Thank you for this excellent tutorial on how to manage gain when recording with a Zoom F6. This was very helpful. I’m not familiar with the term PFL, have you made any tutorials on this topic. It is not explained in the manual?

I would like to ask as about what we can see on the display: in your example, you have one mic, so we can see it on channel 4. Now we can see also four more levels, LR and LINE. Would you mind explaining why is that so, there is one mic (mono) but we see LR and yet LINE? Why is that so, and what those levels are? That's a beginner question, so I hope my question is clear enough. Thanks

So if I have the gain on the channel fader where I'm getting basically no signal in the L/R mix, but I have my trim set so the channel is registering proper peaks around -12, if I record, I will have sound in a track just not in the mix file? Also what do you normally run your trim at? It's dependent on the sensitivity of the mic I assume?

Hi there! thanks for your great videos! Quick question, I need to use an f6 as a audio interface to record a live performance. Do you know if its possible to use headphone output to speakers and line out as a 3-4 output to send click to the musicians? Thank you!

great video! thanks a lot! I have a general question: I work a lot on "run and gun" kind of video-projects, and I can hardly think of a scenario, where I (or anyone) would prefer to have control over the channel's faders rather than the channel's gain trim. So why are the knobs faders and not gain-trim anyways? To me that seems so strange... By the way, same thing happens with the Sound Devices Mixpre 6-ii, where the knobs are set to fade by default, rather than gain trim (you can change that with the mixpre 6-ii, but, then you loose the possibility to use limiters...)

Is it possible to live stream through the x/y mics?

Hi Chris, thanks again for doing these videos! What is the purpose of the Line out/Line level when you only needs a stereo signal into the SD-card. I just find it confusing/annoying to have these 2 bars clipping for no reason? Or am I totally wrong? Stein

just one question : is 32bit float can safe the wireless mic clipping ?

Hi Chris, Q.. How to set Phamton off? It is possible to set ext potenciometer to control mic volume snd use the trim for line out and LR?

my zoom f6 sounds harsh and iritating at high frequency. is that normal? I could send you some audio samples. Thank you

does rec level works in usb multitrack mode?

Hay friend. What exactly is happening when 1 presses in the volume nob? I can haar a hicup which suggests I guess the audio changes and I do kind of hear a difference. But as I'm blind when doing this what's showing on screen? Also which of these profiles or waht have you is the out of box 1?

It have an internal mic like the F8? To id. Notes

Hi Chris. Great info here! After transferring the files over usb, the F6 seems to forget all the levels I’ve set every time, so I have to remember to reset before recording again. Am I missing something? Thanks.

Does Zooms Automix damage the raw footage?

great video!!!! what is your favourite settings?

So , thats mean every time i record 24 bit i should go to the submenu and then trim to control the gain level ? ... correct if i am wrong...

How can you recover the clipped recording in 32-Bit Float mode with other software then Adobe Audition?

Exist a 1000 hz tone to calibrate volume in headphones, like the F8?

So in 32bit mode If the line is clipped and didn't notice on set, it's completely gone? How do I do with out line out not on?

The Zoom F6 claims to support 32-bit Float format by using two analog-to-Digital convertors together. It DOES NOT claim to support actual 32-bit audio, which would consist of a sign bit followed by 31 bits of actual resolution. The distinction is important. The Zoom F6 MIGHT be based on the Asahi Kasei AK5736 chip, a 6-channel, 24-bit ADC designed specifically for audio applications in the Mic to Line input voltage range at sample rates up to 192kHz. Supporting evidence for this is an announcement by Zoom of a fire at a supplier’s factory (Asahi Kasei Microdevices) in 2021 that caused some replacement components to be used in production. Asahi Kasei Microdevices happens to be the maker of the AK5736 chip, as well as some others in the design. While 24-bit audio file format actually uses a sign bit along with data bits, the 32-bit Float audio format does not mean a sign bit along with 31 bits of integer data. In fact, packed within the 32 bits is a sign bit (+/-), an 8-bit exponent, and only 23 bits for the number’s mantissa. The implication here is that the extended dynamic range of the 32-bit Float format and therefore the F6 is not the result of more fine resolution than any common 24-bit convertor has, but the ability to start to populate the 8-bit exponent field in the data file. The exponent field in 32-bit Float actually provides a theoretical potential of more than 1582dB in dynamic range, as compared to just 144dB for conventional 24-bit. (Never mind that the surrounding hardware in the F6 limits the actual dynamic range to more like 124dB at best.) From Wikipedia: “The trade-off between floating point and integers is that the space between large floating-point values is greater than the space between large integer values of the same bit depth. Rounding a large floating-point number results in a greater error than rounding a small floating-point number whereas rounding an integer number will always result in the same level of error. In other words, integers have round-off that is uniform, always rounding the LSB to 0 or 1, and floating point has SNR that is uniform, the quantization noise level is always of a certain proportion to the signal level. A floating-point noise floor will rise as the signal rises and fall as the signal falls, resulting in audible variance if the bit depth is low enough.” Zoom has said publicly that the F6’s inputs are connected directly to the A-to-D convertor(s). The AK5736 chip supports this as a default. Each of the 6 channels has a differential input (i.e., pins 2 and 3 from the XLR connector) through the chip’s onboard differential PGA (programmable gain amplifier), one per channel. Each PGA is programable in the range of 0 to 20dB gain. There are no configurable “attenuation pads” in the design as have been speculated by others. It would be logical to assume at first that what the Zoom F6 would call a “Mic” input would be programmed for 20dB of gain, while a “Line” input would be programmed for 0dB of gain. But this may not actually be the case, because Zoom would have then needed only a single 24-ADC to populate the 32-bit Float file format. They say they actually used two chips, in search of greater dynamic range than is available with just 24 bits. So how did they do that? The AK5736 chip explicitly supports connecting multiples of itself to expand the total channel count (6, 12, 18…), with all conversions happening in different chips under the supervision of a common timing scheme. One logical way to run a two-ADC design that would provide 20dB more dynamic range would therefore be to (1) connect all the inputs in parallel to both ADCs, and (2) always program one ADC’s 6 channels at 0db gain while programming the other’s 6 channels at 20dB gain. This would cause both ADCs to provide results to the CPU (albeit amplified to different levels), along with any corresponding “conversion overflow” warning flags. The CPU would obviously have to ignore data coming an overflowing convertor and use only data from the other. In the case where both convertors produced a valid result, 20dB could be added to one, with that result then being averaged with the other in order to allow calculation of an averaged result supported by both convertors. In this way, up to 5 exponent bits could be populated over the entire dynamic range to support the additional 20dB of dynamic range in the final data file. This is a full strategic use of the 32-bit Float WAV audio format. In this scenario, however, it would not have been necessary at all for the user to specify “Mic” or “Line” input at all for each input, so this may not be exact scheme that Zoom used. (Another scheme would involve setting each channel independently to 0dB or +20dB in the first ADC as specified by the user, but then to reverse each of those settings in the other ADC. The final results would be the same as above, but the user might feel better that he/she had some input to the process!) The advantages of using 32-bit Float format in field or live music recording is obvious: far less attention can be paid to recording level changes up front; it is possible to “set it and forget it” in many circumstances. That said, Zoom did not do itself any favors with how it programmed level settings in 32-bit Float format. In this mode, the F6 does not allow the menu-based adjustment of input “Trim” like it does in other formats, which seems to discourage the idea of optimum level settings during recording of 32-bit Float audio. But it DOES actually allow recording level changes by another method, the front-panel dials. Confusingly, the file recording level can in fact be set in 32-bit mode for armed channels as long as recording has been activated but not started. Once recording, however, adjustment of the same dials does not change the recording level, it just changes the mix of that channel’s level to the LR mix balance. The channel meters change as expected in EITHER mode and it’s quite easy to forget that you are not actually making recording level changes when you think you are. Such are the pains of a tiny user interface like the one on the F6. A final note on the Asahi Kasei AK5736 chip: The device includes programmable “bias” (aka phantom power) voltage per channel for connected microphones, which sounds perfect for the F6. However, the programmable voltage range is limited to 9VDC. So it seems the phantom power in the F6 does not originate from this chip. In fact, the F6’s 24 or 48VDC phantom power has to be blocked from the chip’s inputs by a capacitor.

That bit about how convoluted it is to change recording levels on the individual channels... Having to open the menu to adjust the "trim" when the actual knobs are right there, ready to be used if they could... uhm... I am not sure I would buy the recorder anymore...

A bit more complex than the Zoom F3 :)

ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-eEIl7LL-Zyk.html problem with f6 i have myself a ticking sound since i update the firmware with 1.90E

first coment from Portugal :)

Excellent tutorial. ZOOM chosen to reinvent the wheel with those knobs. It's not intuitive at all. Yet, if I got all correctly, you can't change level on the fly when recording in 24 bits. Zoom forcing us t 32 bits :) well this is probably what 99% of people are attracted anyway in this recorder. ZOOM could leave the decision to the users instead of an arbitrary choice. Nonetheless, ZOOM F6 is a fantastic piece of equipment.

Why? It must be programmable to set the trim via the knobs. And they must know that this is what is desired. And it can't be because they don't want to cannibalize their top level line because it doesn't get any better than this for them. Do they have a deal with other companies?