RatHole

A new EdgeSounds compression algorithm makes it possible to efficiently reduce the size of packed audio data and later unpack exactly same bits, with no difference to the original. The compression algorithm compresses audio data, considering the bit depth of the digital data contained in the audio file (8/16/24/32 bit). The algorithm is proven to be equally effective on compressing any type audio files, sample banks, multi-track audio files, Impulse Tracker Instrument files and any other files containing audio data. The compression ratio of the algorithm varies from 36% to 78% or even more, and depends on the size of audio data, the balance between the tone and noise component, bit depth and other factors. Usually, the higher is the bit depth and the fidelity of audio data the better is the compression ratio.

The RatHole can be successfully used as a common archiving utility for any other file types as well.