Handy Charts

Audio File Storage Space

Sometimes you need to know how much storage space is required to save digital audio files. The tables below will help in estimating such requirements.

Table 1 can be used to estimate the storage requirements for uncompressed stereo files such as WAV (.wav), AIFF (.aif), BWF (.bwf), and AU (.au).

For multitrack files using these formats, use Table 2 and multiply by the number of tracks in the session.

Use Table 3 for lossless compressed files, such as FLAC (.flac), Monkey's Audio (.ape), WavPack (.wv), True Audio, (.tta), ATRAC Advanced Lossless (.aa3), Apple Lossless (.m4a), Windows Media Audio Lossless (.wma), and Shorten (.shn).

Table 4 can be used for estimating lossy compressed files, such as MP3 (.mp3), Ogg Vorbis (.ogg), Musepack (.mpc), Advanced Audio Coding (.mp4), ATRAC (.aa3), RealAudio (.ra), and Windows Media Audio Lossy (.wma).

Table 1
Approximate
Size of 1-Minute
Stereo WAV File (MB)

Sample Rate (kHz)	Bit Depth
Sample Rate (kHz)	16	24	32
44.1	10.6	15.9	21.2
48	11.5	17.3	23.0
88.2	21.2	31.8	42.3
96	23.0	34.6	46.1
176.4	42.3	63.5	84.7
192	46.1	69.1	92.2

Table 2
Approximate
Size of 1-Minute
WAV File (MB/Track)

Sample Rate (kHz)	Bit Depth
Sample Rate (kHz)	16	24	32
44.1	5.3	7.9	10.6
48	5.8	8.6	11.5
88.2	10.6	15.9	21.2
96	11.5	17.3	23.0
176.4	21.2	31.8	42.3
192	23.0	34.6	46.1

Table 3
Approximate
Size of 1-Minute
Stereo FLAC File (MB)*

Sample Rate (kHz)	Bit Depth
Sample Rate (kHz)	16	24	32
44.1	4.2-6.4	6.4-9.5	8.5-12.7
48	4.4-6.9	6.9-10.4	9.2-13.8
88.2	8.5-12.7	12.7-19.1	16.9-25.4
96	9.2-13.8	13.8-20.8	18.4-27.7
192	18.4-27.7	27.6-41.5	36.9-55.3

____________________
*The size of FLAC files vary greatly and depends on many factors including the complexity of the music, the method of conversion, and level of compression used.

Table 4
Approximate
Size of 1-Minute
Stereo MP3 File (MB)

Bit Rate (kbps)	File Size (MB)
32	0.24
64	0.48
96	0.72
128	0.96
160	1.20
192	1.44
256	1.92
320	2.40

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