Audio Storage Capacity Calculator (WAV vs FLAC vs MP3 per GB)

How it works

PCM bits per second = sample rate × bit depth × channels · bytes = bps ÷ 8 × seconds · lossy bytes = kbps × 1,000 ÷ 8 × seconds · FLAC ≈ 55–65% of PCM (music)

Digital audio stores a number for every sample of every channel, so an uncompressed file grows in direct proportion to how many samples per second are taken, how many bits each one uses and how many channels there are — CD quality works out at 1,411 kilobits per second, a little over ten megabytes a minute. Lossless codecs such as FLAC exploit the predictability of real music to cut that by about 40% with the original recoverable bit for bit, while lossy codecs discard what psychoacoustic models say the ear will not miss and are described purely by their bitrate, which makes their size independent of the source resolution. Speech is far more compressible than music, and modern codecs like Opus and AAC-HE sound clean at bitrates MP3 cannot manage.

Worked example

A 4 min 30 s stereo track at 44.1 kHz / 16-bit is 1,411 kbps, so 47.6 MB as a WAV — 10.6 MB per minute — about 27.6 MB as FLAC and 10.8 MB as a 320 kbps MP3 (4.4× smaller). A 64 GB card holds about 1,340 such WAVs, 2,300 FLACs or 5,900 MP3s — roughly 100 hours of WAV or 444 hours at 320 kbps.

Frequently asked questions