Our Digital Music

64k, 96k, 128, 256k. What do they all mean? It’s simple really: the bigger the number, the higher the quality. But there is a catch: the higher the number, the larger the file size.

Just like an internet connection is rated, a music file is rated at kilobits per second, not kilobytes per second. The more kilobits you have available, the more data you can fit in the audio file. The more data you can fit in an audio file, the better sounding the song will be. Told you it’s simple.

Now then, how do you know which data rating you should go for? Well, it really depends on what you will be doing with the audio file and where you are going to be listening to it with.

A 64k audio file is usually a standard in the podcasting field. Podcasts tend to go on for over an hour, so you want people to be able to understand you but not have to download a huge file. A 90 minute podcast encoded at 128k would be 84.3MB while the same podcast encoded at 64k would only be 42MB. It would then only take half as long to download the file: something that is necessary to get your content out quickly in addition to being able to help out lower bandwidth customers.

For music, if you are limited on space, you need to compromise on quality sometimes. If all you are doing is just listening to a song on a crappy pair of earbuds (for instance, iPod earbuds), then 128k will do you just fine. If you have a pair of higher-end Bose or Shure headphones or are a complete audiophile, then go as high as you possibly can. If you are an audiophile, you might even want to go to lossless format, but that will come at a later date.

Just like marriage, music quality is all about compromises. I’d suggest ripping the song from your CDs at multiple bitrates to see which one you prefer the most. But a word of warning: do NOT re-encode a lower bitrate file to a higher bitrate one or even vice versa. If you can, always encode from the source CD.

Comments Off