Rode NT1 5th Gen over USB: can it really not clip?
The file cannot clip. The microphone still can. 32-bit float describes what happens after the converter — the capsule and its impedance converter reach their limit before the numbers do.
Short answer: the recording cannot clip. The microphone can, and when it does, no bit depth brings the sound back.
Over USB the NT1 5th Gen is a complete signal chain: capsule, impedance converter, up to 40 dB of internal gain, and a 32-bit float converter running to 192 kHz. Thirty-two-bit float has so much numerical range that a level set 30 dB too high is a scaling error rather than a lost take — you pull it down afterwards and nothing is missing. That part of the marketing is true and genuinely useful for one-take recordings you cannot repeat.
What it does not do is protect the analogue side. Before the converter there is a capsule whose diaphragm has finite excursion and a FET stage with a supply rail. Shout into it from five centimetres and the distortion is created in the microphone body; the converter then records that distortion with perfect numerical fidelity. "Impossible to clip" is a statement about the file, not about the sound.
The part almost nobody connects: over USB the phantom power question disappears entirely. The same NT1 that is listed as requiring +48 V is powered by the 5 V USB bus in this mode — the capsule polarisation is generated inside. That is why the same microphone appears as "phantom required" on one page and "no phantom" on another: it is one body containing two independent power paths, and which one applies depends on which socket you used. Over XLR into a Scarlett Solo 4th Gen the same capsule asks the preamp for about 35 dB and will not make a sound without +48 V.