How do people know if an audio track is 16 or 24-bit?

[meowingdogs]

And what does it even mean? Is kHz something about quality and 16/24-bit about how active the channels are? Or is it the other way around? I don't know anything about this lol

[BozQ]

This is audio bit-depth. We usually can tell if it's 16-bit or 24-bit by looking at the bitrate of the soundtrack.

It's hard to describe here, but look for YouTube videos explaining audio bit depth.

[Mr.Terry]

Without getting technical and just keeping it simple,64 bit sounds very much better than 16 bit because there is more music in 64 bit.Always choose 64 bit if you have a choice.The difference is quite dramatic.

[bigshot]

yeah right ^

16/44.1 refers to the bit depth and sampling rate. The bit depth indicates how low the noise floor is. 16 bit is capable of having a noise floor over 90 decibels down- low enough you will never hear it no matter how high you turn the volume up. The sampling rate indicates the highest frequency possible, The way it works is half the sampling rate is the highest frequency that can be reproduced, so 44.1 is capable of reproducing frequencies up to 22kHz. Human beings can only hear to 20kHz, so 16/44.1 is audibly perfect to human ears.

Higher bit depths and sampling rates are used for mastering and mixing. There are benefits for those purposes, but for listening to music or movies in your home 16/44.1 is all you really need.

[BozQ]

Originally Posted by bigshot

yeah right ^

16/44.1 refers to the bit rate and sampling rate. The bit rate indicates how low the noise floor is. 16 bit is capable of having a noise floor over 90 decibels down- low enough you will never hear it no matter how high you turn the volume up. The sampling rate indicates the highest frequency possible, The way it works is half the sampling rate is the highest frequency that can be reproduced, so 44.1 is capable of reproducing frequencies up to 22kHz. Human beings can only hear to 20kHz, so 16/44.1 is audibly perfect to human ears.

Higher bitrates and sampling rates are used for mastering and mixing. There are benefits for those purposes, but for listening to music or movies in your home 16/44.1 is all you really need.

16-bit/24-bit refers to the bit depth. Not bitrate. They're two different things.

44.1kHz is the sample rate.
Together, they form the audio resolution.


Blu-ray soundtracks are commonly 24-bit/48kHz. Sometimes 16/48. And rarely more than that, although they exist. The highest audio resolution Blu-ray supports is 24/192. Akira is one of the extremely rare ones in this resolution.

[bigshot]

fixed, thanks!

[meowingdogs]

haha thanks guys