Linear Digital Audio Data Rates and Storage

Dec 1, 2007 12:00 AM

Need to calculate the required hard drive space for audio files? These equations will make it easy.

Data Rate (kb/s) = # channels � samples per second � bits per sample

Data Rate (KB/s) = # channels � samples per second � bits per sample � 8

Data Rate (MB/min) = # channels � samples per second � bits per sample � 8 � 1,048,576 � 60

Storage Requirement (hours/GB) = 1 � (# channels � samples per second � bits per sample � 8 � 1,073,741,824 � 3600)

Explanation:
Divide by 8 � convert bits to bytes

Divide by 1,048,576 � convert bytes to megabyte (10242)

Divide by 1,073,741,824 � convert byte to gigabytes (10243)

Multiply by 60 � convert seconds to minutes

Multiply by 3600 � convert seconds to hours

Back to the Engineer’s Notebook