Early prototype of a domain-specific compression codec for mass spectrometry data. Lossless path beats gzip and comes close to mzMLb. Lossy at q=4096 hits 13.17 MiB from 75.55 MiB mzML. Single DDA dataset. Decode is 27x faster than mzMLb. Early days.

Proteomics data is growing faster than storage budgets. AI demand is driving up hardware prices. The format debate is a distraction. Compression tools exist but nobody uses them. The real problem is that storage is an unaccounted line item, and the field optimizes for generation, not retention.

Thermo locks its format behind Windows DLLs. Bruker does better. Spectronaut adds its own proprietary layer on top. Open formats are inevitable, but the real bottleneck is proprietary converters in the middle.