Track Count Calculator — Storage & Bandwidth Requirements

At 48 kHz, 24-bit: each track uses about 0.5 GB per hour. A 24-track, 4-hour session needs approximately 50 GB. At 96 kHz, double that to about 100 GB. Always budget 50-100% extra for safety, overdubs and virtual instrument bounces.

At 48 kHz, 24-bit: 24 tracks need about 3.5 MB/s sustained read/write (24 × 48,000 × 3 bytes = 3.456 MB/s, or 27.6 Mbps). Most modern SSDs easily handle this. For 64+ tracks at 96 kHz (about 18 MB/s), an SSD is strongly recommended. Avoid recording to the same drive as your operating system.

This depends on your audio interface (input count and USB/Thunderbolt bandwidth), disk speed, and CPU. Most USB 2.0 interfaces max out at 16-24 channels. Thunderbolt interfaces can handle 64+ channels. The disk is rarely the bottleneck with modern SSDs.

Recording at 96 kHz doubles storage and bandwidth requirements. For large track counts (32+), this can be significant. Many professionals record at 48 kHz, 24-bit as it provides excellent quality while keeping resource usage manageable. Use 96 kHz when the project demands it.