Audio Engineering: Know It All

Chapter 19. Data Compression

Data reduction or compression techniques are important because universal laws put a premium on information. You couldn’t read all the books in the world, neither could you store them. You might make a start on reading every book by making it a team effort. In other words, you might tackle the problem with more than one brain and one pair of eyes. In communication theory terms, this approach is known as increasing the channel capacity by broadening the bandwidth. But you wouldn’t have an infinite number of people at your disposal unless you had an infinite amount of money to pay them! Likewise no one has an infinite channel capacity or an infinite bandwidth at their disposal. The similar argument applies to storage. ...