Index DigitalBitrate & File Size

Bitrate & File Size

Data rate and storage for PCM and DSD, from CD quality to DSD512.

Bit rate4.608Mbit/s

File size1.56GB

Per minute34.6MB

Hours per terabyte482h

Data rates compared

MP3 320 kbit/s320 kbit/s

CD, 16-bit / 44.1 kHz1.41 Mbit/s

24-bit / 96 kHz4.61 Mbit/s

DSD64 (SACD)5.64 Mbit/s

24-bit / 192 kHz9.22 Mbit/s

DSD25622.6 Mbit/s

Your setting: 24-bit / 96 kHz, 2 ch4.61 Mbit/s

Reference rows are two-channel and uncompressed, except MP3.

Input

Encoding

Sample rate (kHz)

Bit depth

Channels

Durationmin

Size after lossless packing%

100% is raw WAV, AIFF or DSF. FLAC and ALAC usually land between 50 and 70%.

How it works

PCM

Linear PCM stores one word per channel for every sample, so the data rate is a plain product:

R = f_s \times N \times C \quad [\mathrm{bit/s}]

where $f_s$ is the sample rate, $N$ the bit depth and $C$ the channel count. CD audio is $44100 \times 16 \times 2 = 1\,411\,200$ bit/s.

DSD

DSD is a one-bit stream at a multiple of the CD rate. DSD64 runs at $64 \times 44.1\ \mathrm{kHz} = 2.8224\ \mathrm{MHz}$ per channel, and each step up doubles it.

Size on disk

\text{size} = \frac{R \times t}{8} \times \rho \quad [\mathrm{bytes}]

with $t$ in seconds and $\rho$ the packing ratio. Sizes use decimal units (1 GB = 10⁹ bytes), the same convention drive makers use. Lossless packing returns every bit on playback; it only removes redundancy, so quiet or band-limited music shrinks more.

How it works

PCM

Linear PCM stores one word per channel for every sample, so the data rate is a plain product:

R = f_s \times N \times C \quad [\mathrm{bit/s}]

where $f_s$ is the sample rate, $N$ the bit depth and $C$ the channel count. CD audio is $44100 \times 16 \times 2 = 1\,411\,200$ bit/s.

DSD

DSD is a one-bit stream at a multiple of the CD rate. DSD64 runs at $64 \times 44.1\ \mathrm{kHz} = 2.8224\ \mathrm{MHz}$ per channel, and each step up doubles it.

Size on disk

\text{size} = \frac{R \times t}{8} \times \rho \quad [\mathrm{bytes}]