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Topic: WavPack 4.0 Beta Release 1 (Read 10414 times) previous topic - next topic
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WavPack 4.0 Beta Release 1

The first beta release of WavPack 4.0 is ready and available here:

http://wavpack.com/beta1.zip

Recent feature additions include support for multichannel audio and 32-bit ieee floating-point data (including the non-standard files from CoolEdit / Audition).

WavPack 4.0 Beta Release 1

Reply #1
Sorry for the delay on this; I guess I bit off a little more than I could chew... 

The package comes with the command-line encoder and decoder, a winamp2 input plugin, a "readme" detailing the release and a little command-line tag-copying batch utility that might be handy for someone. The "quality" mode has been removed for repair and the "very fast" mode is gone forever.

Files generated by this release will probably be decoded by all future versions, however I would suggest waiting a few weeks for archiving to make sure nothing ugly comes up (especially for multichannel and floats).

Questions and comments welcome...

WavPack 4.0 Beta Release 1

Reply #2
Bad timing, dude. Everyone will think it's a prank :B

WavPack 4.0 Beta Release 1

Reply #3
Quote
Bad timing, dude. Everyone will think it's a prank :B

It was scheduled for yesterday but I found a couple bugs in testing which had to be fixed. Releasing it then would have been a worse prank!

 

WavPack 4.0 Beta Release 1

Reply #4
I really like 3.97 because even in high loseless mode it was by far the fastest encoder out there! The high mode (and every other mode) in this beta are sooo slow. On that note, I haven't had time to test the compression yet  Do you plan to do anything that would speed up compression?

WavPack 4.0 Beta Release 1

Reply #5
Quote
I really like 3.97 because even in high loseless mode it was by far the fastest encoder out there! The high mode (and every other mode) in this beta are sooo slow. On that note, I haven't had time to test the compression yet  Do you plan to do anything that would speed up compression?

Hmm. On my system, this beta's "high" mode is actually faster than the same mode in 3.97.

There were several optimizations in 3.97 for Windows 95/98 and small CPU caches that are no longer in there, but even on my old 300 Mhz K6 running Win95, the beta's default mode is faster than the "high" mode of 3.97.

I have no plans for doing any optimization in the near furture unless there're systems where this code is really significantly slower than 3.97. What kind of difference are you actually seeing and what kind of system do you have...?


WavPack 4.0 Beta Release 1

Reply #7
I'm very pleased to see -hx6 beating APE extra high by 2% on the very non-reprasentative set of files I tried!  I'm going to have to try it on some real music now, despite being horrificly slow

I came across a small bug, although it shouldn't really happen in real life, my guess is the decoder breaks if the compression ratio was >100% (wv ends up bigger than wav)

I get:
Code: [Select]
C:\_AUDiO\WV4b>wvunpack 1.wv

WVUNPACK  Hybrid Lossless Wavefile Decompressor  Win32 Version 4.0b1  4-1-04
Copyright (c) 1998 - 2004 Conifer Software.  All Rights Reserved.

restored 1.wav in 0.00 secs (lossless comp: -1.#J%)


The real problem is that decoding doesn't complete even though you get the restored message - I'm left with 1.wv in my directory rather than 1.wav...  This is a somewhat unfair test, I compressed a 1 sample long wave, which results in a file ~3x bigger.
< w o g o n e . c o m / l o l >

WavPack 4.0 Beta Release 1

Reply #8
Quote
WAV
549,627,428 byes

3.97 Wavpack Frontend -- Lossless High
308,986,270 bytes
56.22%
TOTAL: 134.32 Seconds

4.01 -x4
312,141,766 bytes
56.79%
TOTAL: 1555.69 Seconds

4.01 -fx6
320,150,256 bytes
58.25%
TOTAL: 721.37 Seconds

Flac 1.1.0 Flac Frontend -- 8 with verify checked
319,615,047 bytes
58.15%
TOTAL: Doesn't do time, but it was by far faster than -x4, around -fx6 speed

Monkeys Audio - High
304,652,892 bytes
55.43%
TOTAL: 113.11


I don't know if those are comparable but that's what I did without knowing much. It was just 7 tracks from one CD all encoded so I could compare. I haven't tried it with any other music because after that horrible showing I wasn't really interested. Maybe I'm using the wrong commands or has compression really slowed this much without seeing a decrease in filesize?

WavPack 4.0 Beta Release 1

Reply #9
Gobd:
Oh, I see the problem. The "-x" modes are only intended if you are willing to spend a lot of extra time encoding for a little extra compression (but they don't slow decoding time). Just eliminate them to get the modes equivalent to 3.97. So, the high mode would be just "-h" with no "x". I think then you should get speed and compression results pretty close to 3.97.

BTW, you can still use Speek's frontend to try out the new version because the new programs work just like the old ones (and you can try the new features by using the extra options box).

Thanks for posting your results; I was starting to get worried... 

Mac:
Hi Mac! Thanks for pointing out that problem. I don't think it's an unfair test at all, especially for a compressor that's supposed to be "lossless". Anyway, the issue wasn't with the "negative" compression (which I have tested) but with the small size of the output files. For some reason Windows was giving me "zero bytes" for the size which was blowing up the code that displays the compression ratio and, in the case of wvunpack, deleting the output file. I hate to do a new release for this, but if nothing else comes up soon I will.

In the interim, you can get around the problem by using pipes for your testing:

Code: [Select]
> wvunpack 1.wv - > 1.wav


That's cool that -hx6 generates smaller files than Monkey's extra high with your files. With some special cases it should actually be much smaller, but with real music I have found that it's somewhere between Monkey's normal and high.

BTW, I think I remember that you use CoolEdit / Audition. I would be interested if you tried compressing native 32-bit float files.

Thanks for your testing!

WavPack 4.0 Beta Release 1

Reply #10
Been using it lately just for lossless and no problem found so far !
awesome encoding speeds
Kind Regards , Tcmjr

Aka HellSnoopy