What is a bit?

A bit is piece of information coded as a 1 or 0 (on or off)

what is bit depth?

Bit depth is the number of bits available for each sample. The higher the bit depth, the higher the quality of the audio.

A bit depth of 16 has a resolution of 65,536 possible values and a bit depth of 24 has over 16 million possible values.

16Bit Binary

16Bit Binary *more bits more accurate the audio is.

Bit rate

The bit rate of a file tells us how many bits of data are processed every second Measured in Kbps

To calculate the bitrate use:

Frequency × bit depth × channels = bit rate

So at a Sample Rate of 44.1khz at 16bit in 2 channel Stereo:

44,100 x 16 x 2 = 1,411,200

Then to work out the size 1 minute of 2 channel audio at 44.1Khz 16Bit you would times your sample rate and time in seconds:

1,411,200 × 60 =84,672,000Kbps

BBC Bitesize