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Comment by tancop

3 hours ago

theres a big difference between 99% quality and 30%. near lossless is a good name for the first one. if you treat it in a binary way where everything short of 100 falls into one "lossy" bucket you lose all the practical differences that make one encoding much better than another.

I agree with you somewhat, and I like what is described in the article. But I also feel like we are diluting the meaning of the word to make things sound better. Lossy/Lossless is inherently binary, and it carries a specific meaning. It would not detract from the work at all if it was described differently.

You can't be a little bit on fire :)

> theres a big difference between 99% quality and 30%.

sure

> if you treat it in a binary way where everything short of 100 falls into one "lossy" bucket you lose all the practical differences that make one encoding much better than another.

no; lossless is an inherently binary term. and I don't lose all the practical differences of better lossy encoders by understanding that; I'm not just going to start using mp3 96k because I have an understanding of lossless vs lossy encoders...

Lossless is an objectively binary term.