1411

Why 1411 is special

Same number, different meanings

How 1411 is understood across different contexts — never implying one meaning because of another.

• Mathematics

  The figure is simply the format's arithmetic — 44,100 samples, sixteen bits, two channels — and it is the benchmark that every lossy audio format is compared against.

• History

  In 1411, the First Peace of Thorn settled the war between Poland-Lithuania and the Teutonic Order (Eastern Europe).

• Technology & computing

  Uncompressed CD audio at 44.1 kHz, 16 bits and two channels yields approximately 1,411 kbit/s. Lossy formats are typically described by how much they reduce this while remaining acceptable.

Not just a mathematical number

1411is also used in ways where ordinary arithmetic doesn't apply — each listed below with what genuinely does and doesn't follow from it.

• Mathematical number

  A genuine quantity — its mathematical properties (prime, square, factors, and so on) are real facts about it.

  A genuine quantity that ordinary arithmetic applies to — it can be prime, even, a perfect square, added to another number meaningfully, and so on.

• Measurement

  Also used as a measurement — Digital audio sample-rate standards.

  A quantity expressed against a defined unit or standard (24 hours in a day, 60 seconds in a minute) — arithmetic is meaningful, but the specific value is a fixed convention of the measuring system, not a discovered mathematical property.