Sheldon Cooper sat in his room, frowning at his laptop. He had just downloaded what he thought was a rare, pristine recording of Eine kleine Nachtmusik conducted by a little-known Austrian maestro from 1958. The file was labeled “FLAC — Lossless — 24bit/192kHz.”

“That’s because you haven’t trained your ears. Lossless audio preserves every bit of the original signal. Lossy compression throws away ‘imperceptible’ data. But imperceptible to whom? The algorithm? The average listener? Not to me.”

She handed him a glass of sweet tea. “So what’s the useful part of all this? You gonna sit here and sulk, or learn something?”

Meemaw had come over to babysit while Mary and George attended a church potluck. Sheldon dragged her into his room.

Sheldon paused. That was the problem — he had assumed “lossless” meant flawless. But lossless only preserves what was originally there . If the original recording was flawed, lossless just gives you a perfect copy of imperfection.