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Topic: WavPack 5.6.0 Released (Read 5685 times) previous topic - next topic
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WavPack 5.6.0 Released

Not sure if it makes any sense for another news item since the last release is still on the HA home page, but WavPack 5.6.0 is available.

As discussed here, one of the obvious omissions in previous WavPack versions was not accepting Apple's ubiquitous AIFF audio format as a source (because I naively assumed CAF would replace it). That’s the most significant enhancement for WavPack 5.6.0.

Also there is improved handling of PCM files that claim to be a non-whole-byte depth (e.g., 12-bit) but aren't actually (i.e., they have non-zero "padding" bits). This was also discussed recently.

The cmake support has been greatly improved, including building WavPack as a subproject and utilizing external toolchains like MinGW-w64, which can actually now build the Cool Edit / Audition and Winamp plugins. Also, support has been added for the Open Watcom compiler and targeting OS/2.

For the remaining minor fixes and improvements, see the official NEWS file.

Binaries and source can be found on the GitHub release page or the WavPack downloads page. I have now included both the MSVC compiles and the MinGW-w64 compiles that will work on Windows XP (and actually seem a little faster than the MSVC versions).

Note that I am no longer able to generate binaries for macOS. These should probably be obtained from HomeBrew anyway, which has already been updated to 5.6.0.

One other cool peice of WavPack news is that WavPack is finally natively supported in Audacity using libwavpack!

Thanks!

Re: WavPack 5.6.0 Released

Reply #1 –
Thnx for the new release. :)

Re: WavPack 5.6.0 Released

Reply #2 –
Quote from: bryant on
Not sure if it makes any sense for another news item since the last release is still on the HA home page
IMHO no reason to be sparse, not many news on HA these days!

Re: WavPack 5.6.0 Released

Reply #3 –
Moderator supplemented the FLAC 1.4.0 news posting with 1.4.x links rather than a new posting, and will probably have an opinion that matters more than mine.
(Which agrees with rutra80's on this matter - but I'm not the site admin.)

I noticed that a 5.6.0 XP version is available at https://www.wavpack.com/downloads.html , so:
I haven't bothered to check why a separate "XP-nonfriendly" version is necessary (speed?) If it is that the XP version is "provided as-is, not officially supported", that could of course be clarified - but I wondered anyway if one should warn XP users to stay off the builds at https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php/topic,120469.msg993282.html#msg993282 (due to bug described in the 5.5.0 thread). I didn't want to bump a thread that maybe nobody would find if it isn't bumped ... Generally I think it is a bad thing to mod posts just over being obsolete, but maybe one could do so - or post a mod note - if that is fine with both poster and mod (@bryant and @korth , that is).


And for once the WavPack wiki entry now got shorter, as I could delete the how-to-handle-AIFF-by-CAF-remuxing.
 

Re: WavPack 5.6.0 Released

Reply #4 –
I have updated the reference to those buggy XP binaries. I couldn’t delete the downloadables, but since it was an edit it won’t bump the thread.

As for the current ones, I thought that the XP mention (sans "and later") would discourage most people from downloading them unless they really had a need. I wouldn’t call them “as-in, untested” as I do test them, but not as thoroughly as the MSVC reference ones. After all, I was using them when I noticed that the 32-bit version wasn’t displaying the MD5 sum of one file, leading me to the _ftelli64() bug.

They also don’t have the manifest, but I’ve never understood how that might benefit my console apps. On my system they actually do seem a little faster, but since the most time-critical parts are already assembly, there’s not too much difference the compiler can make (other than turning off -O2, of course).

And @Porcus  I actually never even tried that AIFF hack you had in the wiki, but I’m definitely glad you were able to delete it. Thanks for keeping that up to date (and me honest)!

Re: WavPack 5.6.0 Released

Reply #5 –
Hello everyone, I'm using BatchEncoder on windows 11 to encode my dsds in wavepack, everything works fine but I don't care about the tags, is there any way to make it import them? With Ubuntu in the command line it was enough to enter --import-id3 and i used to import them, how can i do with BatchEncoder?
Thank you

Re: WavPack 5.6.0 Released

Reply #6 –
I also wanted to ask some other things hoping someone will answer..... BatchEncoder on windows I saw that it uses wavpack version 5.1.0, how do I make it use the latest version 5.6.0?
To import the tags I solved by inserting the same line in the presets that I use on ubuntu, that is --import-id3
Thank you

Re: WavPack 5.6.0 Released

Reply #7 –
I am not using it regularly, but: Can't you use F8 to set up converters? At the bottom there is a path to executables, you can edit that?

Re: WavPack 5.6.0 Released

Reply #8 –
I tried but it doesn't work, I'm using BatchEncoder portable version, I tried to change the paths but it goes wrong, maybe I'm doing something wrong, I don't know......in the tools tab this link is set (which I can't find in wavpack site) http://www.wavpack.com/wavpack-5.1.0-x64.zip and tried to change it to this https://github.com/dbry/WavPack/releases/download/5.6.0/ wavpack-5.6.0-x64.zip but it doesn't work......

Re: WavPack 5.6.0 Released

Reply #9 –
I meant, the local path - not the download link. But - dirty as it looks - what about going to the subdirectory in BatchEncoder's "tools" directory, ignoring the fact that it says 5.1.0; and simply replace the .exe files by the 5.6.0 ones you downloaded from the latter link?

Re: WavPack 5.6.0 Released

Reply #10 –
I put the installation from exe and I replaced the wavpack.exe file inside the installation folder but I can't tell if it's using 5.1 or 5.6......

Re: WavPack 5.6.0 Released

Reply #11 –
I must say that I'm impressed. I started comparing FLAC vs. WavPack last month and I already wonder why WavPack is not the leading codec (yet?). Thank you, @bryant :)
audiophile // flac & wavpack, mostly // using too many audio players

Re: WavPack 5.6.0 Released

Reply #12 –
Quote from: tuxman on
I must say that I'm impressed. I started comparing FLAC vs. WavPack last month and I already wonder why WavPack is not the leading codec (yet?). Thank you, @bryant :)
Thanks for the kind words!  ;D

At this point WavPack could never replace FLAC as the de facto lossless compressor; there’s simply too much momentum and no compelling justification. FLAC does exactly and perfectly what 99% of users need and want.

However, for the other 1% who have specific requirements, I am happy that WavPack is able to fill a niche with its collection of unique features. The downside of that is that is a more complex product, but I guess that comes with the territory. And of course if someone wants to use WavPack for their collection for another reason, that’s fine too. Because it’s open-source it will always be trivial to migrate to something else in the future.

Re: WavPack 5.6.0 Released

Reply #13 –
Quote from: bryant on
The downside of that is that is a more complex product

I earn most of my money by writing code, but I still don't understand audio compression algorithms enough to even contribute patches. Complexity seems to be a relative term.  :))

At least I have one more thing to talk about during my usual ramblings when going out with friends.  8)
audiophile // flac & wavpack, mostly // using too many audio players

Re: WavPack 5.6.0 Released

Reply #14 –
Quote from: tuxman on
(yet?)
Quote from: tuxman on
At least I have one more thing to talk about during my usual ramblings when going out with friends.  8)
Just don't say I discovered this amazing new audio codec ...  ;)   The algorithm is the oldest in widespread use, except that you still find some Shorten files in the live trading community, including at archive.org.
WavPack the file format is much more recent than the (de)compression algorithm though, it had a major change once in its history. I presume I don't offend bryant by claiming that one reason why WavPack behaves so sane all over, is that it settled on the file format at a stage one could avoid everyone's mistakes - yet still expand to cover cafaifffloatdsd files.

BTW, if you want to use WavPack, consider -x4 for high resolution. Encoding is done only once, so you can bear with that taking time if you want the few percent size gains. (Yes the big differences are between no "x" and -x1, and then between the not-very-useful -x3 and the slow-but-better-bang-for-buck -x4 and even more so for high resolution).  So -mvhx or -mvhx4 or with double h.

Anyway, enough for now of my hijacking a release thread ...

Re: WavPack 5.6.0 Released

Reply #15 –
Ah, I had used -x3 first. I'll update my defaults to -x4 then! :)
audiophile // flac & wavpack, mostly // using too many audio players