Audio File Size Calculator — WAV & Uncompressed Formats

At CD quality (44.1 kHz, 16-bit, stereo): approximately 50 MB. At 24-bit: about 76 MB. At 96 kHz, 24-bit: about 165 MB. These are uncompressed sizes — FLAC compression typically reduces this by 30-50%.

WAV files store uncompressed PCM audio data — every single sample is stored at full precision. A CD-quality stereo file generates 44,100 samples × 2 bytes × 2 channels = 176,400 bytes per second, or about 10 MB per minute.

For a typical band recording at 48 kHz, 24-bit with 16 tracks: each track uses about 8.2 MB per minute. For a 4-hour session: 16 × 8.2 × 240 = approximately 31 GB. Always have at least 50% more storage available than calculated.

For recording, 24-bit is strongly recommended over 16-bit for the extra headroom. Sample rates above 48 kHz offer diminishing returns for most applications. The final delivery format (CD, streaming, vinyl) will determine what you need, but recording at higher specs preserves options for mastering.

These figures use the binary base (1 MB = 1,024 × 1,024 = 1,048,576 bytes), which is exactly how Windows File Explorer displays and labels file sizes — Explorer divides by 1,048,576 but still writes "MB". So the numbers here match what you will see on a Windows drive. Strictly per the SI/IEC standard this binary unit is a mebibyte (MiB); decimal MB = 1,000,000 bytes, so a file shown here as 50.5 MB is 52.9 decimal MB. macOS (Snow Leopard and later) reports the decimal figure. The raw byte count in the breakdown lets you convert either way.