I’m VERY new to working with recording my voice, and am narrating a book and just recorded the first 15 minutes of the book only to find out that the bitrate isn’t correct for uploading to the website. Apparently I need a bitrate of 198, and to be perfectly honest I have no idea what that means, and when I tried to look it up online I just got some really confusing information. Can anybody please tell me how to make my mp3 file 198 bitrate, and perhaps explain in laymen terms what it is and why? 
Assuming you’ve already installed the optional LAME MP3 encoder…
File → Export → Save as type = MP3 files
Click Options
Bit Rate Mode = Constant
Quality = 192kbps (198 is not a standard setting.)
and perhaps explain in laymen terms what it is and why?
Bitrate is related to the amount of compression and file size. The bitrate in kbps is the number of bits per second of audio. If you know that there are 8 bits in a byte, and you know the bitrate and playing time, you can calculate the file size.
More compression = lower bitrate = smaller files = lower quality*
Less compression = higher bitrate = bigger files = higher quality.
CDs are uncompressed PCM at 44,100 samples per second, 16-bits, and two channels. With lossless files, we usually don’t talk about bitrate, we usually talk about sample-rate and bit-depth. But, from the above data you can calculate the CD bitrate of 1411kbps. With lossless compression, such as FLAC or ALAC, you can compress CD files to about half the bitrate (and half the file size with no data-loss or quality loss).
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- Sometimes the MP3 can sound identical to the uncompressed original (in a blind listening test). If a 192 or 256kbps sounds exactly like the original, we can’t say 320kbps is “better”.