7.3 Digital Sound
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sounds that contain wider ranges of both frequency and amplitude, such as musical
performances. In these cases another strategy can be used, file compression.
As we have seen in earlier chapters, file compression can be either lossless or lossy.
Lossless compression uses more efficient coding to reduce the size of a file while preserv-
ing all the information of the original. Lossy compression discards some of the original
information.
Lossless compression is essential for files containing computer programs and alpha-
numeric data since any change in this information could easily disable the program or
distort the data. Images and sounds, however, often remain recognizable and usable
when relatively large ...