Lossy compressed audio is not inferior to lossless audio

Key Takeaways

• Lossless audio is high quality, but most listeners won’t be able to tell the difference when compared to high quality lossy formats.
• Compression makes audio files easier to store and transfer, and many streaming services offer compressed files.
• Enjoying compressed lossless music is very useful for everyday listeners because it saves storage space and uses less data.

It seems that lossless audio has taken center stage for audiophiles lately, and for good reason: Higher quality than lossy formats. A tuned ear can tell the difference between lossy and lossless audio files, so audiophiles everywhere pretend it’s the end-all be-all of music enjoyment. And as an author who has written extensively about lossless audio, I have contributed to the discussion. While I think it’s important to recognize the benefits of lossless audio, and I think it’s important to recognize the importance of other file formats, some of them fall into the lossy category.

What is pressure?

File information is lost, due to save and transfer

Compression, when it comes to files, means reducing the file size by removing some information that may not be so important — in order to preserve the important information and the big picture of the file — to make it easier to store and transfer. In the case of audio, this means pushing the professionals to make these audio files more usable by the average person with plenty of disk space and bandwidth. A good analogy for the difference compression makes to audio files is image compression, which we can easily see.

If you have two images, a raw file and a JPEG, the raw file straight from the camera will be much higher quality and detailed, but the file size will be larger. When it’s compressed to JPEG, it might look more pixelated, but you still understand what you’re looking at, you get the picture. Common compressed audio formats include MP3, AAC, and Ogg, as well as FLAC, which, while not lossy, is still compressed.

Compression ensures that the files don’t take up a ton of storage space, while maintaining the quality of the audio itself.

All files you will receive from streaming services will be compressed, lossless or lossless. The same goes for files you buy and download yourself — presumably, artists won’t sell uncompressed WAV files of their albums. Compression ensures that the files don’t take up a ton of storage space, while maintaining the quality of the audio itself. Lossless audio files are compressed in a way that ensures you don’t lose the full audio quality of the track, while lossy compression removes details from the audio, but does so in a way that has the lowest impact on the track’s size. the file is intended to be.

Why would you listen to a lost compressed file?

Modern problems, modern solutions

Before streaming became the norm, you probably downloaded music (legally, of course), and you probably encountered MP3 files that sounded atrocious. These might have been 96kbps MP3s, which would just sound dull and lacking in nuance. Compare that to 320kbps MP3 files or Ogg files (typical of Spotify), which sound really good, and very familiar to the average listener.

Most people won’t go beyond that sound quality, and that’s because the way those files are compressed, even though they lose some detail, they actually sound great regardless.

If you’re listening to Spotify using mobile data, you save a lot of data by streaming highly compressed lossy formats.

The main reasons behind the use of lossy compressed formats such as MP3, Ogg, AAC, and others are that they save storage space because their low bitrate allows for fast file transfer while taking up less space, and also saves you bandwidth when streaming. So, if you’re listening to Spotify using mobile data, you’re saving a lot of that data by streaming highly compressed lossy formats compared to how much you’d spend if you were streaming FLAC files over mobile data.

Now, listening to lost compressed music is not only important for the storage space and the data you save. I also think that enjoying compressed lossy music is best for most listeners because most people will not gain anything from listening to lossless audio. The difference between audio files that are lossless and lost (but of high quality) is very small to the untrained ear, if it is heard, that if you have to spend any extra money or go out of your way to listen to the said audio that is not lossy, ‘ re probably wasting your time.

In the end, the lossy compressed files we listen to are usually enough.

So, while I think it’s great that lossless audio is widely available on many streaming platforms, and I think having your own portable media is great for many reasons (including the fact that CDs are lossless), if you’re already listening to lossy compressed audio, and you’re happy with it, you don’t have less reason to change what you’re listening to. You may install a function to try to hear the difference between lost and lost files or make more disk space to store said files, but in the end, the compressed lost files that we listen to are usually more than enough.

Don’t let any audiophiles on Reddit convince you otherwise — if something works for you, you’re not obligated to change it because it’s “better” another way. And in fact, the amount of storage space and data you save by listening to lossless compressed files is reason enough on its own.