ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Lossless Transform Audio Compression

When we listen to music, we hear different sounds in different frequencies, which means how high or low the pitch of the sound is. For example, the sound of a whistle is a higher pitch than the sound of a car engine.

Audio compression is a way of making the size of music files smaller, so they take up less space on our devices. There are two types of audio compression, lossless and lossy. Lossless compression makes the files smaller without losing any of the original sound quality, while lossy compression sacrifices some of the sound quality to make the files smaller.

Let's talk specifically about lossless transform audio compression. To do this, we use a mathematical formula to turn the music into a simpler form, which is called a "transform." Think of it like turning a puzzle into a simpler puzzle with fewer pieces, but still the same image.

Once we have the music in this simpler form, we can then find and remove any patterns that repeat over and over, which we call "redundancies." For example, the same drumbeat might be played multiple times in a song, so we can identify it and only store it once. This makes the music file even smaller, but still with no loss of sound quality.

So, in summary, lossless transform audio compression is a way of making music files smaller by using a mathematical formula to simplify the music, finding and removing any patterns that repeat over and over, without sacrificing any of the original sound quality.