To configure VirtualDub to compress the audio is a very similar process to that for the video. In fact, it’s slightly easier as audio codecs have fewer options than video codecs. Most of the terminology is common between the two:
The data rate is specified in terms of kilobits or kilobytes.
Rate is controlled in one of the following (encoding modes):
Constant bitrate
Average bitrate
Variable bitrate
Audio is however, a one-dimensional data and therefore quite different in nature from video. Therefore:
Instead of spatial dimensions we have a number of channels. Mono sound is recorded with one channel, stereo sound with two, and multi-channel audio with a variable number of channels (e.g. 5.1 Surround has six channels).
Instead of frame rate we have sample rate—the number of samples recorded every second. Current state-of-the-art codecs are tuned to handle frequencies of up to 48,000 Hz, which is the sample rate used in DVDs. Audio CDs are sampled at a rate of 44.1 kHz. It comes...