Yeah, think of a codec as a fine‑tuned filter. Lossless is like a pristine mirror – every byte stays, the image is intact, no data loss. Lossy is the quick‑draw sword; you slice out the less perceptible bits to shrink the file, but you sacrifice a bit of fidelity. The sweet spot is where the human eye or ear can’t notice the cut but the file size drops enough to make a difference. It’s all about integrity versus efficiency – you gotta weigh the value of that extra data against the bandwidth or storage you actually have. In the end, if the loss is invisible to the user, the trade‑off is usually worth it.

Got it – tighter compression loops, lower entropy models, less buffering. I’ll keep the bit‑rate tight, the quantization step minimal, and the error propagation under control. If it drops below the noise floor, it’s still worth it.