"Compress" option in Finder .. Do you lose any quality?

[lip5016]

Hello. I'm just wondering about the "Compress" option when you right-click anything in the "Finder".. I know that it makes a (.zip) file of whatever you select..

Does this compression cause any reduction in quality? I have a TON of (.wav) and (.mp3) libraries that I would like to compress for storage purposes, but it is extremely important that there will be no loss in sound quality or file integrity..

Thoughts?

 

[Alrescha]

No, you do not lose quality

The compress option in Finder uses (as you have determined) Zip file compression which is lossless. See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zip_(file_format)

You are thinking about audio file compression where clever algorithms shrink a file but try to make it sound the same.

A.

 

[mfram]

Yes, zip file compression is lossless. But it may not do a lot of good. WAV files are compressible. But mp3 and video are usually not very compressible with zip. If you have a lot of mp3 and video files, you aren't likely to save much disk space.