Originally Posted By: chesseroo
Just a general question.
I've had some discussions with some rather brilliant computer engineers and programmers (you know, the kind of guys who learned how to build circuit boards at the age of 12) simply stating 'any compression format can be assumed to induce errors by its very nature of how they compress data'.

I don't know what those guys were doing, but at 16 I was designing lossless packing algorithms for 2D graphics. I know for a fact that RLE (run length encoding) and dictionary pattern matching are lossless. They are also blindingly obvious, and a 16 year old could come up with them on his own.

Lossless audio is somewhat more complex, but I still have no doubt that it can be done without introducing error. One of the usual methods is to write an prediction algorithm which tries to guess what value will come next based upon previous. If it's right, then nothing needs to be stored. If it's wrong, then the difference between the predicted value and the actual value is stored. The error is the data.

Properly implemented, there are many ways to reduce the redundancy in data, that when undone presents an exact copy of the original. One thing, in packed form damage to the data will be more extensive when unpacked. But that's not a failure of the compression, but of the transmission/storage medium. And why we have error checking and correcting.

Pioneer PDP-5020FD, Marantz SR6011
Axiom M5HP, VP160HP, QS8
Sony PS4, surround backs
-Chris