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The number of bits that are conveyed or processed per unit of time. Bit rate is measured in bits per second (symbol: bit/s). For example, a transmission or processing task that handles one byte per second (1 B/s) has a bit rate of 8 bit/s. The non-standard abbreviation "bps" is often used to replace the standard symbol.

Source: Wikipedia contributors, "Bit rate," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bit_rate&oldid=817574715 (accessed January 21, 2018).

Calculating bit rate

Bit rate can be calculated with the following formula: bit rate = sample rate x bit depth x number of channels

For example, CD-DA audio streams are two channels of 16-bit audio with a sample rate of 44.1 kHz. The bit rate of CD-DA audio can be calculated as: 2 x 16 x 44,100 = 1,411,200 bit/s

Bit rate measurements are usually represented with SI prefixes (base 10), such as kilo, mega, giga, and tera. 1,411,200 bit/s can be represented as 1.4 Mbit/s or 1,411.2 kbit/s. With non-standard abbreviations, this would be 1.4 Mbps or 1411.2 kbps.

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Tip
titleExample: calculate storage requirements for 30 minutes of CD-DA data

CD-DA with the following characteristics: 

  • 2 channels
  • 16 bit
  • 44.1 kHz sample rate
  • 30 minutes (1,800 seconds)

2 x 16 x 44,100 x 1,800 = 2,540,160,000 bits of storage 

2,540,160,000 bits divided by 8 = 317,520,000 bytes

317.52 MB

Related terms

Bit

Byte