I'm not even quite sure how to phrase my question, but here it goes...

The sample rate means how many times per second a sample is taken. Say you measure your pool's chlorine every day.

So 1/day or 365/year.

44,100/second is the CD sample rate. 44,100 times a second a measure is taken and recorded. other common rates are 48,000 and 96,000.  Usually expressed in kilohertz, like 96 kHz.

The bit depth determines the precision of that measurement. How finely can we record the signal.  More bits, more resolution.

So 44/16 refers to the CD standard. I occasionally see online radio stations offer 44/24 or 96/16.

Honestly with modern DACs 44/16 sounds so good it gets harder to justify more.

+1 @erik_squires

I just learned something new!

Erik,
Thank you for taking the time to give a concise understandable explanation. 
Really like the pool/chlorine analogy!

Really like the pool/chlorine analogy!

Hah! I really thought that was my worst analogy ever.

@61falcon,

If you’re new to streaming, I would not limit myself to 16bit/44.1kHz recordings as suggested above. Both Tidal / QoBuz offers high resolution (upto 24bit/192kHz) content. I would leave it up to your ears to judge if you can discern audible differences between low and high resolution tracks.

24-bit sound is a tricky thing to gauge. Does it provide for a greater resolution of sound? IMO and in my system, absolutely YES. The technical explanation is, higher bit recordings has room for 256 times the data. Are you going to be able to hear that difference? Hard to say as human hearing supposedly tops out at 20kHz, but that does not make higher sample rates useless. According to the Nyquist rate, to fully capture a wave, it should be sampled at twice its highest frequency. In other words, a higher sample rate, and a greater bit depth, gives your sound more wiggle room, meaning sound peaks are less likely to be truncated and the subtleties of the music are less likely to be drowned out.

Hope this helps!