The "quantizer" then compresses the representation to the target size while keeping track of the most important information that will later be used to rebuild the original signal.Meta's use of discriminators proves key to creating a method for compressing the audio as much as possible without losing key elements of a signal that make it distinctive and recognizable:"The key to lossy compression is to identify changes that will not be perceivable by humans, as perfect reconstruction is impossible at low bit rates.It's worth noting that using a neural network for audio compression and decompression is far from new—especially for speech compression—but Meta's researchers claim they are the first group to apply the technology to 48 kHz stereo audio (slightly better than CD's 44.1 kHz sampling rate), which is typical for music files distributed on the Internet.And, of course, being Meta, the researchers also mention EnCodec's metaverse implications, saying the technology could eventually deliver "rich metaverse experiences without requiring major bandwidth improvements."For now, Meta's new tech remains in the research phase, but it points toward a future where high-quality audio can use less bandwidth, which would be great news for mobile broadband providers with overburdened networks from streaming media."