How much disc space does YOUR average song take up?

... and while I'm at it, how much does one of your more ambitious projects take up?

I'm mostly doing audio recording, supplemented by some VSTs.
Thanks.
 
I had no idea, so just looked at one in progress 2.1Gb. I never pay attention until the computer warns me space is shrinking, and then I usually just add another drive.
 
It depends on the type of format. Mp3 sound takes less space while wav takes more space.
For example: My last voiceover took 75MB as wav format, while it takes 7mb in mp3 after conversion.
I hope it helps.
 
The biggest difference here is going to be in sample rates and bit depths, and the number of takes you have recorded and available.
A track that's mostly comprised of midi isn't going to take much space at all but a track with lots of audio recordings and lots of takes could easily take a few GB.

Usually when I'm finished a song, and by finished I mean it's gone to print or radio or youtube, or whatever it was for, I'll open the session and remove all unused files.
In protools that's a few clicks and it gets rid of any recorded takes which aren't used in the timeline.

Depending on the song and how easy it was to record that could reduce the session size from 3-5GB down to maybe just 1 GB.

I record at 48/24. Sizes will, of course, be smaller for 41k and larger for 96k.

Vsts and effects aren't really going to contribute to filesize unless, for some reason, those VSTs save their own audio renders in the background.
 
I've never been one of those who have the courage to press delete. My working colleague, deletes absolutely everything he's not used - audio and midi takes, and old project file versions. I'm the absolute opposite and while it's not common, it's great finding the complete file set to an old 1998 recording. I can't play the project file of course - a million versions old, but the audio files are there and it's interesting trying to recover and use them. I've used external USB hard drives now for ages and when they're full, I start new ones.
 
Usually when I'm finished a song, and by finished I mean it's gone to print or radio or youtube, or whatever it was for, I'll open the session and remove all unused files.
In protools that's a few clicks and it gets rid of any recorded takes which aren't used in the timeline.

It's just a few clicks in Reaper too. (Tho you have to make sure that your projects aren't all sharing the same storage folder.)

This is key to saving space on my disk since any given song I do is likely to be a couple dozen tracks, each with half a dozen botched takes that I throw out entirely.
 
Funny how we all deal with this differently? I never clean out the files in my audio folder for each Cubase project. Even worse, I often don't type in the name till too late, and have so many orphan files with unhelpful filenames bass_001.wav is a very popular filename, I note! I've always been a bit paranoid about throwing things away, so I don't. I use external drives for audio and video and they're so cheap now, a 1 or 2 Tb drive is OK to sit on the shelf, like we did with adat tapes!
 
I never thought to look before.


I record mostly audio at 44.1khz/24bit. I don't typically delete unused takes and sometimes there can be numerous takes. Project folders range from 600MB to 1GB and average right at 800MB.
 
As stated, project size depends on the number of tracks and what the track consists of. 96kHz audio takes up 2x the space of 48kHz, and 48 takes a little more than 44.1. Etc.

I generally don’t delete takes that are in the project timeline, even if I haven’t picked anything out of one for a comp, assuming a sane number of takes. False starts or takes ruined by something external that I felt had no redeeming qualities that I deleted on the spot before starting another take, yes, those get cleaned out routinely by doing a project cleanup *after* I reach a point where I think I’ve got everything I’m going to mix. Rarely I’ve had someone over and they do like 29 takes of a 12 bar whatever and I’ll probably not keep anything but the ones I use and maybe a couple extra, but again, not until the mix is in a stable place.

P.S. (edit) Just checked and my relative small stuff (the whole dozen+ I did last year) range from under 100MB (just me and probably a couple takes) up to about 700MB (2-4 people, a coupla-few takes and probably no cleanup on some, or likely a pseudo-mastering alternative/sub-project thingy. It adds up. But, boy, nothing like video. That stuff gobbles GB like free peanuts at the bar.
 
Last edited:
I just had a look at some recent projects.

The song folders range from as low as about 500mb to about 1.5gb. The average is pretty much the same as Chili's, i.e. about 800mb
 
I back up all my stuff on CDRWs via SCSI and rarely do they extend to 2 discs so few will go over 700mb. One song actually extends to 3 discs. But only one. I bounce all my drums down to stereo but I keep the individual tracks. Because of the nature of the way some people sing for me {ie, no one's going to learn stuff beforehand !} I might record in sections so I keep all the vocal and backing vocal tracks. Once an instrumental part is done, anything extraneous is deleted. I commit as early as possible and stick with it unless there is a very good reason for re-doing something and there rarely is. I'm in the basic digital realm but I act like I'm dealing with tape. I can't see the point of keeping takes. I know straight away if the performance cuts it. If it doesn't, I do it again, wiping what I deemed to be not good enough.
 
A typical project folder is between 2 and 6 gigs. That's recording at 48 kHz. That also includes out-takes and other audio that isn't being used. Space is so cheap now there's no need to get too worried about the size of the folder anymore, but I suppose it's always a good idea to get rid of the unused stuff after reaching a final point in a song, though sometimes that doesn't seem to ever arrive.
 
I have a project folder that includes 15 songs recorded @ 44.1 24-bit. All audio other than some drum samples. That also includes 10+ mixes of each song as well as mastering files and such.

The total size of the project folder is 62.5 GB. 7,961 Files, 6 Folders.

Another similar 9 song project is 27.2 GB. I have over 30 projects of similar and smaller size. It adds up quickly.

It does not take long to use up drive space...

Good thing HHD's are cheap. I backup everything and the larger projects, I buy an external drive to backup the backup to.

Backup, backup, backup... Save those backups to an external backup drive. Then buy a new drive, and backup backup...

:)

Did I mention something about backing up stuff? If not, backup!!! Not even kidding!
 
Depending on how you go about it, one song can "gobble up" megabytes galore - and maybe even a gig or two. I understand that a wave file uses 10Mb per minute of record time; by contrast, an MP3 file might "burn" 1Mb per minute, depending on the resolution you set (64 byte versus 256 byte) per second. Since we are probably considering a studio setting where we record our songs, we will focus on the .WAV file format.

Since I am more familiar with the Tascam DP24, I'll discuss that a bit. Your three-minute song itself will grab about 30Mb of disk space; but if you have ever looked inside a folder produced by a DP24, especially after you have done several tracks with punch-ins and multiple "takes" on a track or portion thereof, you won't believe at first how many files reside in that folder! AND THEY ARE .WAV FILES! That is why the DP24 has an option to DELETE UNUSED FILES. This option should in most cases not be used until you have the song recorded pretty much to your satisfaction.

I don't know much about all those tracks except that they contain snippets of your song. I have no idea how you would use one of them if you were attempting to "get it back" into your active song. One thing for sure: If you look at that Size parameter on one of your songs done on a DP24, you will probably be surprised at the amount of disk space you have "burned" in that song - at least until you use the option to delete the unused files. I imagine that other recorders burn through the megabytes at a similar rate if they are full-featured recorders. So far as I know, that 10Mb per minute is pretty much a "hard figure" for the .WAV files. I periodically make a backup of the card which I use in the Tascam. Since I do not scroll around through the letters to hammer in a song name because I cannot see the display, I have been letting the DP24 name songs by its naming convention (SonG ABCD) where the letters are digits taken in sequential order. I then keep an index file containing those file names and the real song name associated with each song. Once I have a backup, I can delete some songs from the card to avoid filling it completely. My 16-gig card will hold several songs, but I am carefull to not "push the envelope" because I did that once; when the card became full, the record process stopped, but I didn't know what had gone wrong (I finally noticed with a scanning device that there was a Card Full error showing). The main result of my carelessness in filling the card was that I ruined the song and had to start over after cleaning up the card and freeing several gig of space.
 
Back
Top