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Topic: why isn't wavpack more popular? (Read 45862 times) previous topic - next topic
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why isn't wavpack more popular?

Reply #75 –
Pardon me but doesn't using FB2K grants you that ability no matter what the format?

why isn't wavpack more popular?

Reply #76 –
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@bryant

Please consider adding the md5sum [of the datapart of the WAVE file] to the header. Just like FLAC and the newest OptimFROG.

an md5sum of the wav file would make me feel a lot more comfortable archiving with wavpack, so i always know my decompressed files are not corrupt.

Also, is there any APL-like feature for wavpack in sight any time soon?

Md5sum and some sort of APL support are on my "to do" list for some time after the beta of 4.0. What's nice is that with the new WavPack format stuff like this can be easily added without breaking anything.

However, even without md5sum there has been error detection in WavPack since 3.0, so you really don't need to worry about a currupted file going unnoticed.

why isn't wavpack more popular?

Reply #77 –
It would be very sweet if Wavpack4 would calculate the md5sum the same way as FLAC does. I believe it cuts the 40 byte RIFF header and md5s the rest. That way I could convert all my FLACs to Wavpack4 and still compare (using md5sum) my collection with my friend's FLAC collections.

why isn't wavpack more popular?

Reply #78 –
For those who are interested, I had a closer listen to some samples which I tend to use when I play with Wavpack and Dualstream. From the Wavpack 4.0 alpha 3 side, it went something like this.

All tests were conducted with alpha 3 as posted above, using -q-2 in the commandline. This setting was used to keep the bitrates below 400 kbits/s, which is about where it needs to be for my needs.

Listening environment: a quiet corner of the house through some Senn headphones out of a Thinkpad laptop, using the onboard sound. All were decoded into wavs, and ABX'ed using the ABX tool in foobar.

blue_monday_intro.wv : 379 kbit/sec. ABX 10/10. Slight background hiss between the beats. No other obvious artifacts as such.
bitter_intro.wv : 368 kbit/sec. ABX 9/10. Very slight change in the background noise, mainly determined at high volumes.
rof_intro.wv : 341 kbit/sec. ABX 10/10. Very slight hiss. Some of the distortion at the peak of the distorted guitar also sounds slightly more distorted, but only right at the loudest peaks. Quite subtle, but there. I have noticed a variation of this effect previously with 3.97 and Dualstream.
badman_intro.wv : 307 kbit/sec. ABX 6/10.  Purely guessing. Transparent so far.

So in a nutshell, the hiss is still there. I have not yet done back to back against Wavpack 3.97 with or without shaping etc, but I am guessing that it will be similar to 3.97 at ~ 320 kbits/sec or so. It was impressive that at least for badman, the encoder used less bits and still sounded transparent, which is the idea behind these quality modes, using more or less bits to maintain quality across all samples, if possible.

I was planning to check this very closely against 3.97 in various forms, but David has suggested I hang back from doing too much as he prepares to go towards a beta release, so I will wait. I might just check a couple of the obvious ones, ie blue_monday_intro and rof_intro against 3.97 to make sure that it has not regressed at least.

Last, but not least, I also transcoded the above Wavpack file to ATRAC3 (132 kbits/sec) and checked it out on Minidisc, compared to the the original wav direct to ATRAC3. I could not detect any transcoding artifacts. I also did a quick check against the same sample as LAME 3.90 alt preset insane transcoded into ATRAC3, and the artifacts were clearly there, as has been reported in this forum previously.

So from testing so far, Wavpack's performance as a lossy transcoding source is still very good.

I'm looking forward to the next beta.

Den.

why isn't wavpack more popular?

Reply #79 –
I'm getting anxious to try the WavPack 4.0. Any news? Still alpha stage?



Enjoy!

why isn't wavpack more popular?

Reply #80 –
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My plan is to have a beta towards the end of this month, although it could easily slip into February as I have some paying work I need to get out of the way...

That was at january , yes I did notice you said it could be delayed

We are entering mid-march ! Any news ? I am holding archiving my cd collection for wavpack 4 !!!!
If you need any help just drop me a line.
Kind Regards , Tcmjr

Aka HellSnoopy

why isn't wavpack more popular?

Reply #81 –
Well, as I explained in this thread (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=9653), nobody should be waiting for WavPack 4.0... 

However, I am about to release the first beta of 4.0 and it's going to have several significant new features compared to the previous alpha, but most importantly the compressed files will be forward compatible. This should happen before the end of March.

Initially, this will be just the command-line encoder and decoder with a winamp2 plugin (like the alpha), but I will immediately start work on a Foobar plugin and get in the support for decoding existing WavPack files. Because of the problems with the "quality" mode discovered by guruboolez and den, this feature is on hold temporarily. I want to get back to this (and have done some work on it) but I didn't want progress on this mode to delay the initial release any longer.

Thanks to everyone for your support, and I promise to start a new thread when the beta is ready!

why isn't wavpack more popular?

Reply #82 –
Thanks for the info
Kind Regards , Tcmjr

Aka HellSnoopy