There was once a time when we really needed to pay attention to disc space and file size when it came to recording. Writing those log sheets is a thing of the past with the plethora of HD space now available at a relatively cheap price. However, I routinely look back on the correlation of file size and audio quality for various reasons. Usually when I begin a recording project I like to dedicate an entire hard drive to the band or project. Using the below calculations I can generally determine the size of the hard drive needed to fit the project. Nowadays I tend to find myself always buying 2TB hard drives which will fulfill any project. If I waste the space, it doesn’t matter. Either way, these calculation tables are great for any engineer to have on hand.
All the calculations for high resolution audio below are for the Pulse Code Modulation audio format. Regularly referred to as PCM, it commonly uses the file extensions .wav or .cda. There are quite a few other combinations of bits per sample and samples per second which may be used as well as a large number of containers and file extensions. Tables below refer to calculations based on the most common mono and stereo settings used by engineers. Calculations for MP3 files are based on the LAME audio encoding standards. They also include both left and right stereo channels because who the hell makes Mono MP3 files? But the again who records at an 64 Kbps? Kbps means “Kilobits per second” (1,000 bits per second) and KB means KiloBytes (1,000 Bytes). There are 8 bits in a byte. Note the uppercase “B” for bytes in “KB”. A lowercase “b” (Kb) would indicate bits.
The exact file size below will vary from system to system likely due to differences between binary and decimal counting systems (multiples of 2 versus multiples of 10). Check out my Base-2 Methodology post to get a better explanation of this confusing phenomenon. The file header information and ID3 tags (for MP3s) will have an effect on the numbers. Album cover art tends to affect these numbers the greatest as images can commonly be 2MB or larger. These numbers should be used as a “ballpark” amount.
Mono WAV (single channel)
| Settings | Bitrate | File size per second |
File size per minute |
File size per hour |
| 16 bit, 44.1 KHz | 705.6 Kbps | 88.2 KB | 5.292 MB | 317.52 MB |
| 16 bit, 48 KHz | 768 Kbps | 96 KB | 5.750 MB | 345.60 MB |
| 24 bit, 44.1 KHz | 1058 Kbps | 132.3 KB | 7.8 MB | 465.1 MB |
| 24 bit, 48 KHz | 1,152 Kbps | 144 KB | 8.640 MB | 518.40 MB |
| 24 bit, 96 KHz | 2,304 Kbps | 288 KB | 17.280 MB | 1.0368 GB |
Stereo WAV (dual channel)
| Settings | Bitrate | File size per second |
File size per minute |
File size per hour |
| 16 bit, 44.1 KHz | 1,411.2 Kbps | 176.4 KB | 10.584 MB | 635.04 MB |
| 16 bit, 48 KHz | 1,536 Kbps | 192 KB | 11.520 MB | 691.2 MB |
| 24 bit, 44.1 KHz | 2,117 Kbps | 264.6 KB | 15.5 MB | 930.2 MB |
| 24 bit, 48 KHz | 2,304 Kbps | 288 KB | 17.28 MB | 1.036 GB |
| 24 bit, 96 KHz | 4,608 Kbps | 576 KB | 34.56 MB | 2.0736 GB |
Stereo MP3 (dual channel)
| Bitrate | File size per second |
File size per minute |
File size per hour |
| 64 Kbps | 8 KB | 480 KB | 28.8 MB |
| 96 Kbps | 12 KB | 720 KB | 43.2 MB |
| 128 Kbps | 16 KB | 960 KB | 57.6 MB |
| 160 Kbps | 20 KB | 1.20 MB | 72.0 MB |
| 192 Kbps | 24 KB | 1.44 MB | 86.4 MB |
| 256 Kbps | 32 KB | 1.92 MB | 115.2 MB |
| 320 Kbps | 40 KB | 2.40 MB | 144.0 MB |