Hz to kbps Calculator for Music Audio

This tool converts the audio sampling rate in Hz (Hertz) to bit rate in kbps (kilo-bit-per-second).


	

			

		

						

				

				

                

			

			
						

		

		






Background





The human ear can listen to frequencies between 20 Hz and 20,000 Hz. An industry standard sampling rate of 44,100 Hz is used for audio. This frequency is more than 2 x 20 kHz (Nyquist rate) and therefore the digital samples are sufficient for waveform reconstruction.





Each sample of the ADC consists of a number of bits (called the bit depth). The greater the number of bits, the better the resolution. 





Formula





Rkbps = Fs * NADC * Nchannels





where





    

  • Rkbps is the bit rate
    • 




  • Fs is the sampling rate in kHz
    • 




  • NADC is the number of bits that represent each ADC sample
    • 




  • Nchannels is the number of channels
    • 






Example Calculation





Apple Lossless Audio Codec supports up to 8 channels of audio at 16, 20, 24 and 32 bit depth with a maximum sample rate of 384 kHz. 





At the highest bit depth and max rate the effective bit rate for ALAC is 98304 kbps or ~ 98 Mbps. 





FLAC by comparison supports up to 8 channels of audio at a max bit depth of 32 and max sampling rate of 655,350 Hz.





At the highest bit depth and max rate the effective bit rate for FLAC is 167769.6 kbps or ~ 168 Mbps.





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