Lossless audio compression shrinks a file while guaranteeing that decoding restores the original samples exactly, bit-for-bit — FLAC, ALAC, and WavPack are the common formats. It works by modelling and predicting the waveform and entropy-coding the small residual, typically getting a WAV down to roughly half its size with no quality cost whatsoever. That makes it the right choice for archival masters, broadcast contribution, and high-resolution music distribution, anywhere fidelity must be preserved but storage and bandwidth still matter. It is the wrong choice for low-bitrate delivery to listeners, where lossy codecs achieve far smaller sizes by discarding inaudible detail; lossless and lossy serve different jobs in the same pipeline.
The book · Volume 4 of 7
Audio for Video: A Complete Guide to Sound in Video Products: From PCM and Codecs to Loudness, Accessibility, and Real-Time Voice Processing
Lossless audio keeps every sample, so it is the right choice for masters and archives and the wrong one for most delivery. Volume 4 explains lossless audio alongside PCM and lossy codecs: FLAC, ALAC and WavPack, sample rate and bit depth, and when lossless storage pays for itself. Written by Nikolay Sapunov, CEO at Fora Soft.
Deciding where lossless audio belongs in your pipeline and where it just costs storage?
We will map your audio from ingest to delivery and say where lossless, high-bitrate lossy or plain PCM fits, with storage and bandwidth math. 250+ video products shipped since 2005.
