ated codewords (called "runs") with the codewords preceded by their counts. For instance, the sequence XXXXXXXXXXYYYYYY is readily compressed into 10X6Y. This provides additional sound compression, for instance with silent or monotone passages. The LPC parameters are stored by means of Rice-Golomb codes, which are described in Chapter 10. Next to FLAC, there actually exists a wealth of lossless audio codecs with compression rates near 40% or better, such as: WavPack, ALAC, Monkey's Audio, OptimFROG, Shorten, WMA, LA, TTA, LPAC, MPEG4 ALS, Real Lossless, Shorten, MUSICompress/WaveZIP, AudioZip, WaveArc, Pegasus SPS (ELS-Ultra), Sonarc, WavPack, and RKAU. Several comparative-merit lists for these different codecs are available. Lossy compression¹7 turns out most useful in any application where the full integrity of the original information does not have to be preserved. The key benefits that outweigh integrity are manifold: reduced file sizes (or fuller use of available stor- age or disk space); faster file transmission (or up- and downloading on the Internet); faster encoding and decoding processing for real-time or streaming applications. Key applications of lossy compression concern audio, images, and video files. Concerning audio files, an underlying principle of lossy compression is based on psychoacoustic 12 Meaning that the size S of the compressed data is 20% of the size U of the uncompressed, source data. Note that the general convention is to define the compression as the ratio S/U, not 1 - S/U, which scales the opposite way as the ratio. 13 The compression rate is in fact dependent on the type of music source. It can be 30-40% for pop, rock, techno, and other loud, noisy music, and 40-60% for quieter choral and orchestral pieces, see: www.firstpr.com.au/audiocomp/lossless/#Links. There exist many Internet sites and tutorials for LPC, see for instance: www.data-compression.com/ speech.shtml; www.answers.com/topic/linear-predictive-coding http://cnx.org/content/m12473/latest/. See: http://flac.sourceforge.