Ham Radio Extra Class Practice Test 2025 - Free Extra Class License Exam Questions and Study Guide

A Codec, short for coder-decoder, serves a critical role in digital communications by encoding and decoding audio or video signals. This process involves converting analog signals into a digital format for effective transmission, storage, or processing, and then transforming digital data back into an analog format for playback or display.

Digital audio and video signals often require compression to reduce their size for transmission efficiency. The encoding process compresses the data, making it suitable for bandwidth-limited communication channels. Conversely, during playback or reception, the decoding process restores these signals to a form that can be understood by human senses. This functionality is essential in various applications, including streaming services, VoIP, and video conferencing, ensuring high-quality, reliable communication.

The other options focus on aspects like amplification, filtering, or signal strength adjustment, which are important in their own contexts but do not encompass the primary function of converting between different signal formats, which is the core purpose of a Codec.