What is lossy and lossless audio?
According to the sample rate and sample size of the sound, we can know that compared to the natural signal, the audio encoding can only be infinitely close at most, at least the current technology can only do this.
Compared with the natural signal, any digital audio coding scheme has certain advantages in that it cannot be fully restored.
In computer applications, PCM encoding can achieve the highest level of fidelity, which is widely used for material preservation and music appreciation. It is used on CDs, DVDs, and our common WAV files. Therefore, PCM has become lossless encoding by convention, because PCM represents the best level of fidelity in digital audio, it does not mean that PCM can guarantee the absolute fidelity of the signal, and PCM can only be infinitely close in the greater extent.
We usually include MP3 in the category of lossy audio encoding, which is relatively PCM encoding. The purpose of emphasizing the relativity of lossy and lossless encoding is to tell everyone that it’s hard to achieve true lossless, just like using numbers to express pi, no matter how high the precision is, it’s infinitely close, no actually equal to pi value.
The so-called lossy and lossless are relative to the software used for the audio format. According to the sample rate and sample size, it can be known that compared to the natural signal, the audio encoding can only be infinitely close at most, at least the current technology can only do this. Compared to the natural signal, any digital audio encoding scheme is lossy because it cannot be fully restored.
In computer applications, PCM encoding can achieve the highest level of fidelity, which is widely used for material preservation and music appreciation. It is used on CDs, DVDs, and our common WAV files. Therefore, PCM has become lossless encoding by convention, because PCM represents the best level of fidelity in digital audio, it does not mean that PCM can guarantee the absolute fidelity of the signal, and PCM can only be infinitely close in the greater extent.
We usually include MP3 in the category of lossy audio encoding, which is relatively PCM encoding. The purpose of emphasizing the relativity of lossy and lossless encoding is to tell everyone that it’s hard to achieve true lossless, just like using numbers to express pi, no matter how high the precision is, it’s infinitely close, no actually equal to pi value.
