Binary Resolution
In computing parlance, bit is the abbreviation for a single binary digit, represented by a 0 or a 1. A word is a binary number with more than one digit. Binary numerics are base-2; thus, each digit can only be a 0 or a 1. In comparison, traditional decimal numerics are base-10, having digits that can only be 0 through 9. For example, the 16-bit binary number 0110111110111010 is equivalent to the 5-digit decimal number 28602. The number of bits per word is simply how many digits there are in the corresponding number. The words in commonly used PCM digital audio formats are 8, 16 or 24 bits long.
Larger words have higher resolution. The number of possible values that can be represented by the bit depth can be calculated by using 2x, where x is the bit depth. Thus, the resolution of a 16-bit system (216) is 65,536 and a 24 bit system (224) has a resolution of 16,777,216. PCM audio data is typically stored signed, in two's complement, so a 16-bit audio sample represents a decimal number from -32,768 to 32,767 and a 24-bit sample represents a decimal number from -8,388,608 to 8,388,607.
Read more about this topic: Audio Bit Depth
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