Audio samples per second?

Question

I am wondering on the relationship between a block of samples and its time equivalent. Given my rough idea so far:

Number of samples played per second = total filesize /

Answer 1

In addition to @BrokenGlass's very good answer, I'll just add that for uncompressed audio with a fixed sample rate, number of channels and bits per sample, the arithmetic is fairly straightforward. E.g. for "CD quality" audio we have a 44.1 kHz sample rate, 16 bits per sample, 2 channels (stereo), therefore the data rate is:

  44100 * 16 * 2
= 1,411,200 bits / sec
= 176,400 bytes / sec
= 10 MB / minute (approx)