Introduction
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 recordings 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.