Re: [ARSCLIST] Lossy compression losing quality (was Re: [ARSCLIST] Pristine Audio and the Milllennials . . .)

[Howard Friedman <hsf318@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Mike, you wrote,

One of my aphorisms is: Unlike stupidity, ignorance is a curable disease.

Herewith, a partial cure for your very limited ignorance.

MP3 is the best known scheme for "perceptual encoding" - compression in 
which losses of the least perceptibility to the human ear are accepted. 
Lossless compression in other sorts of file are well known and include 
ZIP, RAR and TAR. Of course, they are of almost no value with audio 
since those general compressors find little to squeeze out of audio.

Several compressors have been developed which are lossless. Using that 
process to encode, then decode results in the original file at the bit 
level. The one I use routinely is APE ( http://www.monkeysaudio.com/ ), 
though FLAC is a more common selection. Depending on the properties of 
the original file, either will compress by about a factor of two. Oddly, 
the Monkey's Audio page acknowledges the existence of a Mac version but 
does not link to it.

 In my case, the cure may be worse than the disease, since the technology is just about over my head!  And what other aphorisms of yours can you share with us?  And in another vein, almost every time one copies a file, one loses something. 

Howard