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

Generally speaking for PCM samples you can divide the total length (in bytes) by the duration (in seconds) to get the number of bytes per second (for WAV files there will be some inaccuracy to account for the header). How these translate into samples depends on

1. the sample rate
2. bits used per sample, i.e. commonly used is 16 bits = 2 bytes
3. number of channels, i.e. for stereo this is 2

If you know 2) and 3) you can determine 1)

In your example 89300 bytes/second, assuming stereo and 16 bits per sample would be 89300 / 4 ~= 22Khz sample rate

Answer 2

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)