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Lossy Audio File Types: How It Is Different From Lossless

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Lossy Audio File Types: How It Is Different From Lossless

Lossy Compression vs Lossless Compression

Lossy is a word used in digital audio to describe the type of compression used to store audio data. The algorithm used in the lossy audio format compresses the audio data in such a way that it discards certain information. This loss of signal means that the encoded sound is not identical to the original.

lossy vs lossless

Lossy audio produces lower quality audio and has a smaller file size.

Lossy compression is also called irreversible compression because data that has been deleted is impossible to recover.

What is the difference between Lossy and Lossless?
When you create MP3 files by ripping one of your music CDs, some details of the original recording are lost, making it a lossy format. This type of compression isn’t just limited to audio; for example, JPEG image files are also lossy compressed.

Sheets of colored paper compressed into a ball

This method is the opposite of lossless audio compression used for formats like FLAC, ALAC, and others. In this case, the audio is compressed in such a way that the data is not deleted. The sound is identical to the original source.

Lossy archives take priority when it comes to compatibility. While lossless files are only supported by some devices and apps, a lossy audio format like MP3 will work on almost any device.

How Lossy Audio Compression Works
Lossy compression makes certain assumptions about frequencies that the human ear is unlikely to detect.

When a song is converted to a lossy audio format such as AAC, the algorithm analyzes all frequencies and then discards the frequencies that the ear should not be able to detect. These low frequencies are filtered or converted into mono signals that take up less disk space.

Another technique eliminates very quiet sounds that the listener is unlikely to notice, especially in the loudest part of the song. This approach reduces the size of the audio file while maintaining the highest possible audio quality.

What happens to the audio when it is compressed?
Lossy compression introduces artifacts. These artifacts are unwanted sounds that are not in the original recording but are a by-product of compression. This noise degrades sound quality and is noticeable when music files are converted using low bit rates.

Various types of artifacts affect the quality of the recording. Distortion is one of the most common artifacts. For example, distortion makes the drums feel weak, without any real beat. Song voices can also be affected, resulting in harsh vocals and lack of detail.

In many cases, casual listeners can’t tell the difference between lossy and lossless encoding, although some audiophiles using very expensive equipment claim to hear the difference. The difference in quality is only noticeable when very low data rates or aggressive compression algorithms come into play.

Why compress audio files?
Most digital audio formats use some form of compression to efficiently store sound. Without compression, the file sizes would be very large.

For example, a typical 3-minute song stored as an MP3 file is between 4MB and 5MB. Using the WAV format to store the same song, but without compression, results in a file size of approximately 30MB, at least six times that size. Fewer songs fit on your smartphone or hard drive when you choose uncompressed audio formats

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Files without compression, lossless and lossy formats

Files without compression, with compression but without loss and with compression and with loss … what does that mean?

There is currently a huge confusion in most people about audio formats and that is why we are going to give an explanation that is as simple and clear as possible so that most of the people who read can understand enough to be able to make decisions about it. .

We will not try to get into technicalities or knowledge What are for specialists or connoisseurs or programmers, such as those who developed the mp4gain, but rather we will talk about general concepts at the beginner level but that can allow a correct understanding of the matter.

So the first thing we must understand is that the quality of an audio file depends on the amount of details it contains and for it to contain many details, it takes up a lot of space on the hard disk.

We could say that there are three groups of audio file formats:

– audio formats that do not have compression such as WAV, AIFF, etc.

– formats that compress audio but do not have a loss of information. FLAC, MPEG-4 SSL, WAV PACK, etc.

– There are also the formats that the audio compresses but that do have a loss of information, for example MP3, Ogg, HERE, ETCÉTERA

Now let’s clarify what it means that some formats do have compression but do not have loss of information while others also have compression but do have loss of information.

The formats that are compressed but have no loss of information what they do is something very similar to zip the file. In other words, they simply compress.

The original information but they do not discard anything, therefore when unzipping the file the original file is obtained again that had all the details and therefore is of very high quality.

On the other hand there are files such as MP3 that are compressed but also to achieve greater compression what they do is that they get rid of some part of the information. For example, those frequencies that are not audible to the human ear also get rid of that information that is redundant and they also use the method called masking which part of the idea that a sound that is very loud and is very forward It will be able to mask other sounds and the human brain will not perceive those other sounds. Therefore, according to this theory, they can get rid of these sounds that have been masked and the file will sound more or less the same to the human ear.

This concept of sound masking was one of the great milestones that made MP3 become so popular because it could compress files a lot, at a time when disk space was not superfluous, and yet they sounded pretty good to that ear. era and those people.

Also the programs that made the normalization of the audio volume, achieved results that at that time sounded good, but at this time the listening ear as a has become much more demanding and sophisticated. And so we need much more modern normalizers with much more algorithms. more powerful like mp4gain.