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Sound - Bitrate

Bitrate is the term for the amount of compression applied to a WAV file. An mp3 file with a bitrate of 128 kbps (stereo) is compressed so that every second of audio data of the WAV file is encoded with 128 kilobits per second (64 kb for the left channel, 64 kb for the right channel). With mp3, a total bitrate of as high as 320 kbps is allowed.

Bitrate (kbps)	Relative Size	Relative Quality
64 and lower	Files are small. Good for sending through the internet for low-speed modems.	There's no sense in encoding in stereo at these low bitrates as it results in really low quality. If the files are encoded in monaural (mono), the quality is great, but it's only one channel
96 - 112	Files are still really small. Good to use as previews for downloading off the internet.	When using joint-stereo, these files are bearable. The difference between these mp3's and the original WAV's are easily identified. High frequencies are not encoded in these low bitrates. Also audible artefacts (distortions introduced by the insufficient number of bits needed to encode the sound) are introduced.