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Topic: WavPack 4.0, any chance to see it ? (Read 7087 times) previous topic - next topic
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WavPack 4.0, any chance to see it ?

Since the very last version of WavPack was released some month ago, what are the probabilities to see birth WP 4.0 ?
Using this gem in lossy mode can really be an alternative to MPC, IMHO.

Sincerely,
Nick

WavPack 4.0, any chance to see it ?

Reply #1 –
I'll let David answer for himself, but I know from the response he made to this same question in a previous thread on HA was for around the end of the year. I know what I'll be asking Santa for Christmas! 

It sounds like there are many cool changes in the wind, and so Wavpack 4.0 is apparently being rewritten from scratch. I agree completely that the lossy is a real gem, and handles certain encoding/transcoding requirements very well.  B)

WavPack 4.0, any chance to see it ?

Reply #2 –
Quote
what are the probabilities to see birth WP 4.0 ?

I would say they are enormous. It only won't happen if a big piece of masonry falls over David's head, or something. :B

WavPack 4.0, any chance to see it ?

Reply #3 –
Quote
It only won't happen if a big piece of masonry falls over David's head, or something. :B

please, No ! 

WavPack 4.0, any chance to see it ?

Reply #4 –
lol. Well put Roberto.
superdumprob
____________________________________________

"If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?" - Albert Einstein

WavPack 4.0, any chance to see it ?

Reply #5 –
Thanks for the interest, guys! If all continues go well (i.e. by staying in wood buildings, etc.) I should be alpha testing in September, betas in November, and release in January. As long as I can keep selling junk on eBay to keep the electricity on, I'll be fine... 

WavPack 4.0, any chance to see it ?

Reply #6 –
Quote
Thanks for the interest, guys! If all continues go well (i.e. by staying in wood buildings, etc.) I should be alpha testing in September, betas in November, and release in January. As long as I can keep selling junk on eBay to keep the electricity on, I'll be fine... 

January ? 
it's a long time...but WP's just too sweeeet ! I'll wait for it 
thx for the info.

WavPack 4.0, any chance to see it ?

Reply #7 –
Quote
As long as I can keep selling junk on eBay to keep the electricity on, I'll be fine... 

A developer of your talents has to sell stuff no Ebay just so he can get enough mony to get by while working on a project????  This is awful.
gentoo ~amd64 + layman | ncmpcpp/mpd | wavpack + vorbis + lame

WavPack 4.0, any chance to see it ?

Reply #8 –
LOL! Stop being so dramatic, David

WavPack 4.0, any chance to see it ?

Reply #9 –
@bryant

Your QA manager wouldn't happen to be a pedigree by chance? There's some big bucks to be made in pedigree cat breeding. I was once offered US$500 equiv by a guy who wanted to "impregnate" my pedigree chinchilla at the time, as long as he could keep the kittens. 

Den the pimp.

PS: I couldn't do it though...

WavPack 4.0, any chance to see it ?

Reply #10 –
I thought the QA was always done by the wife or girlfriend.  All my ASM code was QA'd by my girlfriend. She often found bugs in the executable I wouldn't have thought would exist. They CAN help.

voltron

WavPack 4.0, any chance to see it ?

Reply #11 –
Quote
I thought the QA was always done by the wife or girlfriend.  All my ASM code was QA'd by my girlfriend. She often found bugs in the executable I wouldn't have thought would exist. They CAN help.

David already posted once here that his cat is doing the QA for him.


@Den: How dare you, thinking Ally is that kind of lady, that would sell her favours for money!

WavPack 4.0, any chance to see it ?

Reply #12 –
Quote
@Den: How dare you, thinking Ally is that kind of lady, that would sell her favours for money! 


It wasn't Ally I was worried about. It was our hungry, desperate, Wavpack developer! 

I'm now a little worried,  as I have been on the wrong side of Ally before. I once made the mistake of suggesting I had found a problem sample with Wavpack before. I still have the scars and the stained pants from that experience! 

"Sorry Ally. My mistake. You are right. It's not a problem. I mean, who in their right mind would want to listen to stupid harpsichord anyway. Really. Please. Sorry. I won't do it again...OUCH!!!" 

WavPack 4.0, any chance to see it ?

Reply #13 –
music_man_mpc:
Sorry, as Roberto says, I might have been a little too dramatic. I don't have any paying work right now, but it's semi-intentional and I'm not desperate or worried...yet. BTW, I'm also a big Bill Hicks fan...I'd love to hear what he would have to say about the current George Bush!

den:
Haha! I'd have no hesitation pimping Ally (and she is a purebred Bengal from champion lines), but she's been fixed and so isn't even remotely interested in boys (except me, of course ). Like so many in her generation she chose a career path (software QA with a little mousing on the side) instead of starting a family, and we both accept that and support her 100%.

WavPack 4.0, any chance to see it ?

Reply #14 –
Is there any chance the overhead for using hybrid mode will be reduced in version 4? On the album I tested (Faithless - Reverence) I get a filesize of 431MB in normal mode (commanline -h) and 459MB in hybrid mode (commandline -b320 -c -h). Should I be using different commandlines?

For a comparison, FLAC at highest compression (commanline -8) cam out at 443MB for that album by the way.

Roberto said in another thread that there were some plans to improve the hybrid mode. Also he said there would be instant seeking (the lack of which is the main reason I don't yet use WavPack). Is this correct?

WavPack 4.0, any chance to see it ?

Reply #15 –
Quote
Roberto said in another thread that there were some plans to improve the hybrid mode. Also he said there would be instant seeking (the lack of which is the main reason I don't yet use WavPack). Is this correct?

No, I'm a stinking liar and would be better off banned from this board.

WavPack 4.0, any chance to see it ?

Reply #16 –
Hehe....sorry about that, that's not how it was meant

I was just wondering what "improvement on hybrid mode" meant...improvement on the quality of the lossy algorithm, or reduction of the overhead, etc...?

WavPack 4.0, any chance to see it ?

Reply #17 –
The hybrid "overhead" that you are seeing there is quite a bit higher than I'm used to for most files. The big difference is probably due to the fact that the hybrid mode does not use joint stereo by default like the pure lossless modes do. I'll bet that adding -J1 to the hybrid command line will get the compression a lot closer to regular lossless and several people (notably den) prefer the sound quality of joint stereo in hybrid mode anyway, so don't worry about that.

The seeking problem will be fixed in version 4.0, and in fact would be enough justification for the new version all by itself. However, there will be many other improvements including improved compression and quality in the hybrid mode (including VBR). In fact, it looks there might even be options to select whether to optimize the compression for highest overall compression (wv + wvc) or highest lossy quality, depending on which is more important for the user.

As for the EAC problem from the other thread, I have never found a good workaround for the wvc naming problem (I use dBpowerAMP now because the WavPack plugin works great and supports APE2 tags). It seems to me that there was some sort of script based utility that worked as a backend for EAC that someone had got to work with WavPack, but I can't find it right now... 

WavPack 4.0, any chance to see it ?

Reply #18 –
Will the lossy mode in the new version deliver near-transparent audio files
at lower bitrates than before?
Wanna buy a monkey?

WavPack 4.0, any chance to see it ?

Reply #19 –
Quote
The big difference is probably due to the fact that the hybrid mode does not use joint stereo by default like the pure lossless modes do. I'll bet that adding -J1 to the hybrid command line will get the compression a lot closer to regular lossless and several people (notably den) prefer the sound quality of joint stereo in hybrid mode anyway, so don't worry about that.


Yep, in 3.97/3.98, joint stereo is definitely worth leaving on 99% of the time, giving you a better lossy file, and a lower overhead in hybrid mode compared to lossless.  B)

I'm still hoping that as part of the Wavpack 4 rewrite, David might be able to sneak a safe joint stereo mode in there somewhere. When I mean safe, I don't wish to give the impression that the current one is unsafe, but hopefully it might not be too hard to catch the <1% of times when it may cause a problem. In my own collection of approx 4000 Wavpack lossy tracks, I have come across maybe 3 or 4 problem samples. (Mainly early Beatles recordings that David has highlighted here at HA previously.)

Another hope I have for Wavpack 4 is a completely ruthless ™ quality mode. 

What do I mean by that? I mean a quality mode where for a given quality setting, the encoder will ruthlessly chase that quality, regardless of bitrate, for when you absolutely must, without any doubt, and no ifs, buts, or maybes, kill every single mother f$%%@# artifact in a given encode... (hell even go lossless for part of the track if required...)  B)

(My apologies to Samuel L Jackson for misquoting him...  )
 

WavPack 4.0, any chance to see it ?

Reply #20 –
Quote
Will the lossy mode in the new version deliver near-transparent audio files
at lower bitrates than before?

Yes, but I'm not sure how much lower yet. I will be very happy if I can get the quality of 3.97 @ 320 kbps at an average bitrate of around 256 kbps by using VBR with noise shaping. The minimum possible bitrate will be down to 196 kbps (from the current 265).

The nice thing about the new version is that it will be more along the lines of other lossy codecs (and FLAC) in that the format will be precisely defined at the beginning, but the encoder will have enormous flexibility in creating the compressed blocks. This way, it will be possible to make improvements (including new features and modes, den ) to the encoder for a long time in the future without breaking decoders. In addition to the symmetrical operation of the existing WavPack, there will also be much slower encoder modes to improve compression, without affecting the decode speed, for those that don't mind compressing an album overnight.