Consider a WAV file obtained from a standard redbook CD with 16 bit samples and 44.1 kHz sampling rate. How do you compute the bitrate of the uncompressed stream?
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I don't think there's such a thing as standard redbook FLAC file, as redbook is a standard for pcm audio cds. If the size of a given flac file is X MBytes and it's audio duration S seconds, it's average bitrate in Mbits/s will be (8 * X) / s – audionuma Oct 27 '15 at 17:23
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@audionuma I now clarified the reference to redbook CDs in the question. Given the info in the question, is there a way to compute the bitrate without knowing the actual size of the FLAC file? – landroni Oct 27 '15 at 19:55
Here is how you calculate the constant bitrate (CBR) of uncompressed audio:
Bits Per Second (bps) = Sample Rate (Hz) * Word Length (bits) * Channel Count
Which for 44.1 KHz, 16 bit, 2 Ch. (stereo) audio gives you:
44100 * 16 * 2 = 1411200 bps or 1411.2 kbps (kilobits per second, i.e. bps / 1000)
To express that in bytes, kilobytes or megabytes use the following conversions:
Bits to bytes: bits / 8 or bits * 0.125
Bits to kilobytes: (bits / 8) / 1000 or bits * 0.000125
Bits to megabytes: (bits / 8) / 1000000 or bits * 0.000000125
Which for 44.1 KHz, 16 bit, 2 Ch. (stereo) audio gives you:
1411200 * 0.125 = 1764000 Bps (bytes per second)
1411200 * 0.000125 = 176.4 KBps (kilobytes per second)
1411200 * 0.000000125 = 0.1764 MBps (megabytes per second)
The following tools may be to assistance calculating these numbers:
answered Oct 28 '15 at 8:20
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Why does the number of channels enter in the equation? Is it that on recording (i.e. on ADC) the microphone registers two separate streams of audio? – landroni Oct 28 '15 at 9:17
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Sort of - you have a stream for each side (left and right) in the stereo image. A true mono audio file would only contain one stream. Surround sound comes in several formats with more than two channels, but these are rarely used for music alone. – Michael Hansen Buur Oct 28 '15 at 9:21
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1I thought a kilobyte was 1024 bytes and a megabyte was 1024 kB except in hard drive marketing and packaging. – Todd Wilcox Oct 28 '15 at 11:55
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@ToddWilcox - Yeah, there is a lot of confusion around that. Take a look at this article for some explanations: blogs.gnome.org/cneumair/2008/09/30/… – Michael Hansen Buur Oct 28 '15 at 12:11
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1@MichaelHansenBuur, that first
441000should be44100. (I'd correct it myself, but SE doesn't allow an edit that short.) – Kyralessa Apr 4 '19 at 12:34
Unless I'm getting my math terribly wrong, since standard CDs are stereo these days and there are 44100 samples in a second, each worth 16 bits, then:
2 * 16 * 44100 = 1411200 bps
Which in turn represents 1411.2 kbps (which is in kbit/s). In bytes, it would be 176.4 kBps.
The bitrate of a FLAC encoded file versus the bitrate of the source PCM file depends on the audio content.
In average, depending on the FLAC encoder settings, the ratio FLAC / PCM is around 65 %. See https://xiph.org/flac/comparison.html and http://www.synthetic-soul.co.uk/
So a 1411 kbps audio cd should on average produce an approximately 920 kbps FLAC file.
edit :please notice that this answer was produced before the original post was heavily edited and has in the process removed any reference to flac.
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What I'm interested really in the bitrate of the decoded FLAC file, the uncompressed stream. How is that computed? (I realize that my question may be slightly confusing. I tried to make the question clearer still and switched to WAV as example file.) – landroni Oct 27 '15 at 22:31
