Let's say you have a 16 bit mono digital audio file on your desktop. Do a "get info" on the file, and the OS says it's 8 bit. WTF?!
That is absolutely NOT TRUE. Import that same file into any DAW and it of course displays itself as being 16 bit mono.
BTW, this is not a split stereo file either... The basics of sampling theory support that this is simply WRONG.

The other thing is that same "get info" command won't display the sampling frequency either. Totally lame.
The two most basic identifying features of a digital audio file are bit rate and sampling frequency.

What is the most shocking is that after 20+ years this error continues to exit on any OS.

What say you?

Submit a bug report at apple.com/feedback

It seems hard to believe that after all these years this error exists regardless of OS or computer. I did file a bug report. Anyone have anything else to add to this?

Firstly, what you're referring to as "bit rate" is actually "bit depth." That being said, I tried what you said on some WAV and MP3 files (both stereo and mono) and I don't even see information on bit depth at all. I'm running OS X Lion.

my bad - i was parroting what the computer called bit depth.
sample rate and bit depth is correct.