What's bit rate, sample rate & bit depth? Why you need to understand these terms in music production.

What's bit rate, sample rate & bit depth? Why you need to understand these terms in music production

The amount of technical terms you have to understand in music can be incredibly overwhelming as a beginner. I know for the first couple of years, I just straight up glossed over them all & hoped the numbers I was selecting were going to be what I needed. (not such a smart way of attacking it!)

Bit rate, sample rate & bit depth refer to the parameters used to record digital audio. Let's break down what each means & how it applies to us.

Samples & Sample Rate

A sample is essentially a snapshot of sound. When audio is recorded, the computer takes these 'snapshots' of the sound at super fast speeds.

Sample rate refers to the amount of samples recorded per second.

So, if we're recording at 44,100khz, we're recording 44,100 samples per second.

Bit Rate & Bit Depth

A bit is the smallest unit of digital information. In audio, multiple bits are used together (bit depth) to describe the loudness of each snapshot of sound. When audio is converted from analog to digital, the more bits we allow the computer to use, the more accurate the representation of the original sound.

• Bit depth = how many steps the computer has to describe the loudness of each snapshot.

• Bit rate = how much data per second is used to represent, store, or stream the audio.

So, higher bit depth means more detail when recording & higher bit rate means better sound quality when exporting/streaming audio.

The standard bit rate for most uncompressed music is 1411kbps. This is a bit depth of 16 & a sample rate of 44,100hz.

Bit rate = Sample Rate × Bit Depth × Number of Channels (Mono = 1, Stereo = 2)

To summarise:

• Sample rate is how many snapshots of the sound the computer is taking per second when recording/exporting &

• Bit depth is the quality of each of the samples.

I hope you learnt something today, there's plenty more articles like this to help you progress on your music production journey. Check them out!

Max.