Calculate PCM payload and a basic WAV estimate from duration, sample rate, bit depth, and channels. Switch between seconds, minutes, or hours; compare decimal and binary units; expand editable voice, recognition, CD, video, and high-resolution presets; and compare scale with fixed-bitrate lossy audio.
A common minimal PCM header is small, but metadata, BWF, RF64, and extra chunks increase real size.
| Output | Estimated |
|---|
These bitrate rows compare size scale only; they do not claim equivalent sound quality.
For uncompressed PCM, bytes equal duration in seconds × sample rate in hertz × channels × bytes per sample. Bytes per sample equals bit depth ÷ 8 for the integer and float storage choices listed by this calculator.
The result separates PCM payload from a basic WAV estimate. A common minimal PCM WAV header is 44 bytes, but that is not a universal promise. Extra chunks, alignment, metadata, Broadcast Wave information, and large-file variants add more.
Each factor multiplies size. Doubling duration doubles bytes. Moving from mono to stereo doubles bytes. Moving from 48 kHz to 96 kHz doubles bytes. Moving from 16-bit to 24-bit multiplies payload by 1.5.
The 32-bit float choice is a storage width for PCM calculation, not a claim about an encoder effective bit depth or audible quality. Custom values are bounded to practical ranges to avoid meaningless overflow.
RIFF/WAVE files contain chunks that identify format and audio data. A basic PCM file can have a small header, while cue points, artwork, Broadcast Wave metadata, extensible channel layouts, or application-specific chunks increase overhead.
RF64 and related approaches handle sizes beyond classic RIFF limits. This calculator shows an estimate, not a byte-perfect authoring plan for every WAV variant. Recorder padding and block alignment can also change the exact byte count, especially for unusual sample widths or multichannel layouts.
Decimal units divide bytes by 1,000,000 for MB and 1,000,000,000 for GB. Binary units divide by 1,048,576 for MiB and 1,073,741,824 for GiB. The underlying byte result stays the same; only the displayed unit basis changes.
Storage vendors and upload forms often use decimal labels, while operating systems may display binary quantities with inconsistent names. Keep the selected basis visible when comparing a limit.
Speech recognition often uses mono 16 kHz 16-bit PCM. CD audio is stereo 44.1 kHz 16-bit. Video production commonly uses 48 kHz, often at 24-bit during editing. High-resolution stereo at 96 kHz and 24-bit grows quickly.
Presets are editable examples, not rules. Choosing one fills the real controls, and any change turns the workflow into a custom calculation.
Fixed-bitrate MP3, AAC, and Vorbis estimates depend mainly on duration and bitrate. WAV/PCM depends on sample rate, bit depth, and channels. FLAC is lossless but content-dependent, so a precise FLAC size cannot be derived from a universal ratio.
The comparison table shows scale only. A 128 kbps lossy file and a PCM WAV are not equivalent in editing behavior or quality simply because their sizes can be compared.
One minute of stereo 44.1 kHz 16-bit PCM contains 10,584,000 bytes, about 10.58 MB or 10.09 MiB before meaningful extra chunks. One hour is roughly 635 MB. A mono 16 kHz 16-bit speech minute contains 1,920,000 bytes.
At 128 kbps, one minute of lossy audio payload is about 960,000 bytes. That large difference explains why WAV is useful for interchange while bitrate-controlled formats are common for delivery.
No. Forty-four bytes is a common minimal PCM layout. Metadata, extensible format data, BWF, RF64, and other chunks add overhead.
PCM stores a sample for each channel at every sample position, so two channels use twice the payload of one.
Not automatically. It is a storage and processing representation. Source quality, processing, and delivery format still matter.
MB is decimal at 1,000,000 bytes; MiB is binary at 1,048,576 bytes.
Not precisely. FLAC compression depends on the audio content. The calculator is exact for the selected PCM payload model.
This page models PCM from sample rate, bit depth, and channels. The general calculator models bitrate-based encoded audio.