Hmmm, wouldn't there actually be TWO channels for audio - stereo?
There are as many channels as you hear. They are just not represented
in the same way as images, there are in actuality, as you surmised, two
16 bit 44.1 kHz channels, so we would have a 32 bit setup there if you
did the same thing graphics do, we just choose to give the overall
resoltuion and the amount of channels as two seperate numbers, as each
channel will usually have the same bit depth.
Seablade