If you’ve ever looked at all those digital numbers like 24-bit, 44.1KHz, or 328kbps and wondered what they mean and how they affect the sound of your music, you are certainly not alone. In this article, we will try to explain these in simple terms so you can be better informed when looking at audio gear, streaming services, and downloadable music files.

This is more of an overview for those trying to understand digital music better. We won’t be diving into the different types of music files like WAV, FLAC, ALAC, etc, or more niche formats like DSD, which, as an aside, is also very good, just hard to find.

To fully understand what they mean, we need to step back and look at how music used to be recorded before digital came into existence. In the past, musicians were recorded on analog tape with every ounce of music and tiny nuances of expressions fully captured on that analog tape. That particular tape became the master tape from which copies were made to produce vinyl records and reel-to-reel tapes. Every part of the process was analog. However, like digital, analog has some pitfalls, although they are totally different from digital ones. Vinyl records are not completely silent and, if not cared for properly, develop ticks and pops. The analog tapes can also degrade over time, with some of the subtleties of the music getting lost. And every time you make an analog copy, you can lose some information in the process.

Digital recording offered a system where you could play back the music from a silent background with no chance of ticks or pops. And that original digital recording could be perfectly duplicated.

Digital recording works by taking samples of the music that occur so many times a second that the human ear is not supposed to be able to detect the missing information. Of course, that is highly debatable and a subject for another day.

Most of the first digital recordings were done, where the audio was sampled 44,100 times per second. Each of those samples used a certain number of bits to represent the sample, and in the early days, this was 16 bits. So the 44,100 number is the sample rate, and 16 is the bit depth.

The final number you’ll see, which is the bit rate, is the sample rate multiplied by the bit depth, which in this case would yield 705,600 bits per second for one channel, which you then multiply by 2 for the bit rate consumed by a stereo CD quality recording which is typically expressed as 1411kbps.

Most current studios have upped their game and now record using sample rates of 96,000 times per second and a bit depth of 24, which can capture much more of the subtle nuances of the music. Some even go as high as 192,000 times per second and use 32 bits to represent each sample. And we have to say, recordings done this way can even fool an analog purist as it captures so much more of the music than the old standard.

Now remember, at this point, we’re talking about the original digital master file, which, unless you work in a recording studio, is not usually how the music arrives to your system, but that is how it started out. If you bought a physical CD, you would get a copy of the 16-bit depth 44,100 times per second sample rate.

But the key word here is “file,” and all files have a size. Large files take up a lot of space and eat into a whole lot of bandwidth when you stream them over the internet. It is actually pretty fascinating to look at how much space they do take up.

For example, a 1-hour 2-channel recording done at a sample rate of 44,100 and a bit depth of 16 takes up about 620 MB. That is a lot of space, but it isn’t a challenge for a physical CD disc. And that same hour of music captured at a sample rate of 96,000 with a bit depth of 24 takes up about 2025 MB of space. Just doing the math you could argue there is over three times as much music captured in the 24/96KHz recording. Our ears may not detect it as three times better, but most people will not debate the fact that higher resolution recording has a more natural sound.

And by the way, that is what Hi-Res Audio means. It's anything recorded or mixed from analog tapes at a higher sample rate and/or bit depth than the original CD standard of a sample rate of 44,100 times per second with a bit depth of 16. Hi-Res audio music files will use a sampling frequency of 48kHz, 96kHz, or 192kHz at 24-bit. You might also see a 88.2kHz or 176.4kHz file. But most are 24-bit 96kHz.

For almost 20 years, CDs were the format of choice to playback music, and everyone was at least starting out with a pretty close representation of what was recorded in the studio. As a side note, don’t forget you have to translate that digital file back into analog, which is the job of a DAC or Digital to Analog converter. We have a whole article on this where you can learn more about how DAC’s impact your sound.

But then came the iPod, the Apple music store, and internet based streaming music services. They wanted to offer convenience over quality, as what could be better than hundreds of songs in the palm of your hand or unlimited music coming from the internet? Something had to give. Back then, there were no tiny 2TB SSD drives and internet speed was super slow by today's standards. So, to solve the storage and bandwidth issue, they came up with the idea of compressing the file size. Now remember back to that big bit rate number of 1,411,000 bits per second for a standard CD? They dramatically compressed the file down. This is because if you went to, say, a bit rate of 128,000 compared to the 1411KHz, the size of the one-hour music file dropped from about 620MB to 56MB. That is a huge reduction in the size of the music file from the original copy! However, it allowed for the portability of larger music libraries, and music could come from the internet without dropping out due to bandwidth limitations.

Streaming music services typically use a bit rate of anywhere from 128,000 to 328,000, which you usually see represented as 128kbps, which means 128,000 bits per second. And as bandwidth dramatically improved, unfortunately, most streaming services made no changes. So, what is missing when you compress the music so much? You will still hear the instruments and singers hit the same notes, but the little things that make music sound more live will be gone. The tiny expressions in a singer's voice you hear as small volume changes will be missing. The light and airy brush strokes on a cymbal will sound more like a splash. Compression leaves in all the big nuggets of music but leaves out the sounds that really draw you into the performance.

And this is the important part if you want to hear as much of the original recording as possible.

The way you can use this new knowledge is when you are looking at streaming services. They will all state their bit rate and you now know that this number should be compared to the CD standard of 1,411kbps to see how much you are missing.

If you want to hear your music as close as possible to the high-resolution recordings now being done in most studios there is great news. The convenience of millions of songs in your hand, along with high-quality audio, merged when higher-speed internet service became a standard in most places. And we are not talking about the need for gigabit service. Anything above 25Mbps is plenty for high-res audio streaming!

Some of the more popular services that offer better than CD quality are Qobuz, Tidal, and Deezer. Apple Music and Amazon also offer options if you are in one of those camps. And one great feature most have is the ability to compress the stream if you are traveling or want to download some music on your phone for a long trip. This really gives you the best of both worlds, as you can have the very best quality at home and sacrifice a little for the convenience of music on the go.

Our favorite of the group is Qobuz, as they have taken things to the next level with bit rates as high as 9,216 kbps for 24-bit 192KHz music files. They also offer support for DSD and DXD.

Most high-res audio streaming services cost less per month than a single CD did in the 80s, so it is an incredible deal to have instant access to millions of songs with many of them at better than CD quality. Some will also allow you to purchase and download an entire album in High Res, which gives you full ownership and benefits the artist.

To enjoy the best possible digital music experience, you will then need to have equipment capable of handling the higher bit rates. This is where those numbers we went over come in when you are looking at the capabilities of the music streaming playback system. And as we said earlier, the ultimate sound that reaches your ears is impacted quite a lot by the quality of the unit and the DAC that converts your digital music into analog.

So, to wrap things up and give you some advice. If you are still using a service like Pandora, XM Radio, Spotify, or others you signed onto in the early stages of streaming music, and you are listening through a pretty decent audio system, we highly recommend you try the world of better than CD quality music streaming. We think you will enjoy the sound quality of your music far more than you realized. You can use the knowledge we have shared to compare streaming services and as always, our passionate team of experts is here to help you along your audio journey if you have more questions.

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