The Studio Storage Budget

Size a home studio's recordings before the drive fills: every format priced per second, every take timed from its bars, every kept take and bounce counted in bytes, the 4 GiB WAV ceiling found before a long take, and three copies that all fit

Electronic Music Mall's free Audio File Size Calculator and Sample Rate & Bit Depth Calculator each size one file from a length in seconds, in decimal megabytes. A session is never one file: it is every track, in every take you keep, at a length set by the song's bars and tempo (which the BPM / Tempo Calculator knows and the size tools never ask for), plus stems, mix versions, masters and copies. Writing this budget we also fixed the site's tools: both size calculators printed a three-hour 24-bit / 96 kHz stereo recording as one 6,220.8 MB WAV, which a standard WAV cannot hold (its 32-bit size fields stop at 4 GiB, EBU Tech 3306), and the MIDI converter named 20,000 Hz as MIDI note 135 (notes run 0 to 127). The budget prices each format in bytes a second (24-bit / 96 kHz is twice 24-bit / 48 kHz on everything you record), times every take from bars and tempo and rounds it up (a 96-bar song at 124 BPM with a count-in and tail is a 200 s take), and counts every kept take: the worked five-song EP is 13,372,400,000 bytes with its bounces and samples. It finds when one WAV file in your format is full (2 h 4 min 16 s of 24-bit / 96 kHz stereo; a 3-hour podcast on three mics in one file is over, as three files it is not), compares the project and the drive in bytes (a drive sold as 1 TB shows as 931.32 GB on computers that count in binary), and sizes three copies that each hold the whole library. Every figure is computed from Electronic Music Mall's own calculators; the session, drive and pace are examples. Sources are quoted as published (EBU, Apple Support, Western Digital Support, US-CERT's 3-2-1 rule, the WHO's safe listening lines). It names no drive, interface or software, makes no claim about which format sounds better, promises no data recovery, and is not legal advice on sample licenses. Included: 24 printable pages with 7 steps, four working pages (format and take sheet, session budget sheet, drive plan sheet, backup log), a format reference table, a quickstart, and a personalised sheet worked from the numbers you enter in our calculators.

Look inside

Two full pages from the budget, exactly as printed. Click either to read it at full size before you decide.

What is in it

• Step 1: seven recording formats priced in bytes a second, MB a minute and GB an hour
• Step 2: every take timed from bars and tempo with a count-in and tail, rounded up
• Step 3: every track and kept take counted, and the whole session priced in four formats
• Step 4: the 4 GiB WAV ceiling, with how long one file runs at 1, 2, 3 and 8 channels
• Step 5: stems, mix versions, masters, MP3s and samples added to a project total
• Step 6: the project and the drive compared in bytes, decimal and binary, filled to 80% at most
• Step 7: three copies on two kinds of storage, one away from the building, each holding the whole library
• Four working pages: format and take sheet, session budget sheet, drive plan sheet, backup log
• A reference table: 21 format and channel combinations with bytes a second, GB an hour, WAV run time and hours per 1 TB
• A quickstart, and a personalised sheet worked from your own calculator inputs

The budget picks up where the free Audio File Size Calculatorleaves off. The calculator sizes one file from a length in seconds; the budget times every take from the song's bars and tempo, counts every track and kept take, adds the stems, mixes and masters, finds where one WAV file hits its 4 GiB ceiling, compares the project with your drive in bytes, and sizes three copies that all fit. Every figure in it is an example for you to replace.