This column is devoted to the basics of audio compression, a powerful signal-processing technique that is poorly understood by almost all of us. Once again, I hope you find it useful, or that you can ...

Lossless data compression of digital audio signals is useful when it is necessary to minimize the storage space or transmission bandwidth of audio data while still maintaining archival quality.

Common audio data formats such as the Compact Disc generally store a two-channel (stereo) audio signal. The left and fight channel data streams are stored entirely independently. Various new data ...