Lossy compression - definition

Lossy compression is a data volume reduction technique that involves the deliberate removal of portions of information that are considered less relevant to human perception or system analysis. Its main goal is to significantly reduce file size or data rate while maintaining acceptable quality of the received content. Unlike lossless compression, this process does not allow full recovery of the original data after decompression, as some information is irretrievably lost.

The use of lossy compression is based on exploiting the perceptual properties of human vision and hearing, which are unable to register all the details of the source signal. Algorithms of this type analyse the input data, identify fragments of low perceptual relevance and eliminate them or record them in a simplified form. For example, in audio signals, sounds that are inaudible due to frequency masking may be removed, while in images, low-contrast details or repeating patterns may be reduced.

Lossy compression is commonly used in multimedia formats such as JPEG for images, MP3, AAC and Opus for audio or H.264 and H.265 for video. It enables efficient transmission and storage of data in bandwidth- and space-constrained environments, which is crucial for streaming, mobile systems, web services and non-critical data archiving. In many applications, it is possible to dynamically adjust the compression ratio depending on the available resources and quality required.

Choosing the right level of compression requires a trade-off between quality and performance - excessive reduction can lead to visible artefacts or distortion, such as blurred images, metallic sound or loss of video smoothness. For this reason, professional systems use advanced methods of quality analysis and optimisation of encoding parameters to maintain high efficiency with minimal impact on the perception of content.

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