WavPack 4.1 released, a few fixes and additions Options

[Digisurfer]

...but is there any own icon/symbol for wavpack files?

Thread got a bit over my head too, hehe. Anyways, you could use the icons included with Foobar. I absolutely love them to be honest.

Like to add my thanks while I'm at it. I don't use WavPack at the moment (may in the future depending on my needs) but I definitely do love it and really appreciate the hard work that goes into all aspects of it's development. Keep up the good work!

[guruboolez]

I know two easy way to change wavpack icon:

- using one audio icon library posted here long time ago by Jan S. (installer and uninstaller include: that's great!)
- installing foobar2000, but I don't know if you can easily keep the icon if files are still associated to winamp.

[bryant]

I didn't mention two important things indeed:

1. "encoder requires accurate length" WAS checked
2. The source track was originally an MP3

I've just tested with other sources (For instance lossless) and it works. However as you already mentioned there some cases Wavpack can't handle 

Well, when encoding with other lossless formats like flac/ape there isn't such a problem, and imho if this limits Wavpack to this extent, this behaviour should be changed.

Okay, I added an option that should take care of this. Simply add "-i" to the command line and wavpack.exe will ignore the length in the wav header and simply compress all received samples and then update the appropriate fields at the beginning of the file. Note that this requires a seekable output file (no pipe output). Any trailing RIFF chunks will obviously be lost.

I am also including a new version of wvunpack.exe that has been optimized for 16-bit lossless decoding speed (15% - 35% speedup depending on mode and system) and a new version of the winamp plugin that has media library support.

These 3 programs have NOT been tested extensively and should be used with caution!

http://wavpack.com/wp42b.zip

[384kbps]

To keep this rather off-topic post short...

@Digisurfer
The icons of Foobar2000 are really elegant. A pitty that the icons for Mp3 and Wavpack are quite similar giving me no chance to distinguish them specially at the size of 16x16 pixel.

@guruboolez
Thanks too for the link. The Ogg Vorbis icon is great! - By the way there is a quite complicate possibility (on Win32) to set user-defined icons for every file assiociation by manually created registry files, but this should be content of another thread.

[jsheridan]

I didn't mention two important things indeed:

1. "encoder requires accurate length" WAS checked
2. The source track was originally an MP3

I've just tested with other sources (For instance lossless) and it works. However as you already mentioned there some cases Wavpack can't handle 

Well, when encoding with other lossless formats like flac/ape there isn't such a problem, and imho if this limits Wavpack to this extent, this behaviour should be changed.

Okay, I added an option that should take care of this. Simply add "-i" to the command line and wavpack.exe will ignore the length in the wav header and simply compress all received samples and then update the appropriate fields at the beginning of the file. Note that this requires a seekable output file (no pipe output). Any trailing RIFF chunks will obviously be lost.

http://wavpack.com/wp42b.zip

Did the trick, thanks for fixing

[guruboolez]

decoding speed with 4.2b:
+20% with -f files
+30...35% with defaut encoding files
+40...50% with -h encoding


AMAZING!

P.S. Tested on Duron 800

[ssamadhi97]

The icons of Foobar2000 are really elegant. A pitty that the icons for Mp3 and Wavpack are quite similar giving me no chance to distinguish them specially at the size of 16x16 pixel.

white cat head vs black cat head? not that difficult to distinguish imo.. granted, different background colours would help as well, but saying you have "no chance to distinguish them" is a bit much.

(..sorry about going OT again)

[384kbps]

decoding speed with 4.2b:
+20% with -f files
+30...35% with defaut encoding files
+40...50% with -h encoding
...
AMAZING!
...

Wow! So thanks for the new beta. I'm looking forward to test if at the weekend. I hope i will see the same performance benefit on hybrid files!


@ssamadhi97
Well, yeah. Rather: 'no chance to distinguish at first sight'. Maybe i'm almost blind and need lossless wavpack files to satisfy my senses at all...

[bryant]

Wow! So thanks for the new beta. I'm looking forward to test if at the weekend. I hope i will see the same performance benefit on hybrid files!

Well, unfortunately most of the improvement went just to the pure lossless mode; the hybrid mode had a much more modest gain.

However, I think I can extend the improvement to hybrid lossy with just a little effort. Hybrid lossless is quite a bit more difficult...

edit: added italics

This post has been edited by bryant: Oct 1 2004, 05:18

[bryant]

I fixed a problem where the new, faster decoder would not detect errors correctly and made it work in hybrid lossy mode as well as pure lossless. I also put this faster code into the foobar plugin. Please note that this is all still beta software...

www.wavpack.com/wp42b2.zip

[guruboolez]

Precise values of decoding speed (foo_wavpack 2.2b):

CODE

Difference in decoding speed between wvunpack 4.1 and wvunpack 4.2 beta (foo_wavpack 2.2b):

___________________________________________________________________
encoder setting  |   4.1 decoding  |   4.2 decoding  |   progress  |
                 |     speed       |      speed      |             |
_________________|_________________|_________________|_____________|
-f               |     x40.3       |      x46.5      |    +15.4 %  |
-fx5             |     x40.4       |      x48.3      |    +19.7 %  |
                 |                 |                 |             |
(defaut)         |     x28.7       |      x35.9      |    +25.1 %  |
-x4              |     x30.0       |      x39.0      |    +29.8 %  |
                 |                 |                 |             |
-h               |     x15.5       |      x20.6      |    +32.9 %  |
-hx2             |     x15.5       |      x21.9      |    +41.0 %  |
-hx4             |     x17.3       |      x23.1      |    +32.9 %  |
___________________________________________________________________|

CPU: AMD Duron 800
Motherboard: ASUS A7V
RAM: SD-RAM 133 Mhz [512 MB]

File length: 60:00:00.000 minutes (divided in 4 equal part)
File description: 20 x 3 minutes of different classical music CD
Files [~63 MB] buffered in RAM before decoding (foobar2000 speedmeter)

[A_Man_Eating_Duc...]

I fixed a problem where the new, faster decoder would not detect errors correctly and made it work in hybrid lossy mode as well as pure lossless. I also put this faster code into the foobar plugin. Please note that this is all still beta software...

www.wavpack.com/wp42b2.zip

I've just tried the Foobar 2k plugin and my speed through the speed meter went from 70X (v4.1) to 90X (v4.2b2) on a AMD XP3200.

good work

[bryant]

I have made similar optimizations to wavpack.exe that I made to wvunpack.exe in the hopes of improving encoding speed on the same order as decoding speed. I don't seem to be getting as much improvement, but there is some. Note that this will only have any significant effect on the non-extra lossless modes. I put this in the beta2 package linked to above.

Thanks for everyone's testing!

[bryant]

I have uploaded yet another WavPack beta. This version has the speedup code from beta2, plus I added the functionality of wapet to append APEv2 tags from the command-line. The syntax is identical to wapet except I used -w instead of -t, so this command-line now works in EAC:

CODE

-hb256 %s %d %c-c %o%c -w "Artist=%a" -w "Title=%t" -w "Album=%g" -w "Year=%y" -w "Track=%n" -w "Genre=%m"

If the item value for the tag begins with a '@', then the value is assumed to be a filename which is used to obtain the item's actual value. This is handy for including the CUESHEET field for use with images files with cuesheets and foobar2000:

CODE

wavpack CDImage -w "CUESHEET=@CDImage.cue"

Get it here:
http://wavpack.com/wp42b3.zip

Thanks, guys!

[amn]

If the item value for the tag begins with a '@', then the value is assumed to be a filename which is used to obtain the item's actual value. This is handy for including the CUESHEET field for use with images files with cuesheets and foobar2000:

CODE

wavpack CDImage -w "CUESHEET=@CDImage.cue"

That's perfect to use when you're writing scripts to automate your encodings!

Thank You!

[glauco]

Great work Bryant !!!!!!!!

(Nothing more to say, only to support one of my favorite codecs)

[rjamorim]

I recently talked David into developing a command line tool to apply ReplayGain into WavPack files. That way, WavPack users won't depend on foobar anymore, and it could even be portable to other platforms.

Hopefully he'll have the time to look into it soon.

[Synthetic Soul]

If the item value for the tag begins with a '@', then the value is assumed to be a filename which is used to obtain the item's actual value. This is handy for including the CUESHEET field for use with images files with cuesheets and foobar2000:

CODE

wavpack CDImage -w "CUESHEET=@CDImage.cue"

That's perfect to use when you're writing scripts to automate your encodings!

Thank You!

Exactly.

If only this had been around 3 months back. It would have been enough for me to switch from Monkey's Audio.

Ah well, it's been an adventure.

Congratulations bryant, on your continued development of WavPack. You always seem happy to help your users, and implement suggestions.

[jcoalson]

I recently talked David into developing a command line tool to apply ReplayGain into WavPack files. That way, WavPack users won't depend on foobar anymore, and it could even be portable to other platforms.

Bryant, if you're cool with the LGPL, the FLAC distro has a simple little replaygain_analysis library. it is basically David Robinson/Glen Sawyer's code with Frank Klemm's tweaks and some fixes by me, wrapped into a little library.

Josh

[Cerebus]

I recently talked David into developing a command line tool to apply ReplayGain into WavPack files. That way, WavPack users won't depend on foobar anymore, and it could even be portable to other platforms.

Hopefully he'll have the time to look into it soon. :)

I take back all those bad things I said about you.

Signed,
The Half-Wit

[rjamorim]

I take back all those bad things I said about you.

Signed,
The Half-Wit

Thank-you.

Signed,
The Arrogant

[Duble0Syx]

WavPack is quickly becoming my new favorite lossless format.

@rjamorim: Can this command line tool be used with EAC to add album replay gain properly while ripping?

[adamlau]

Icons!

[JayDPiii]

WavPack version 4.1 is released. It includes some fixes and some added features based mostly on HA user's input. There is also (finally) a real change log. The Linux version has been updated with the new sources, but I have not compiled it.

WavPack website
changelog for 4.1

Thanks to everyone who helped in the development with testing or suggestions...

Hi Bryant;

I am a very simple person and do not like things too complicated.
Still fairly new, I have EAC setup with Monkey Audio to RIP and store my music.

Then, on an as needed basis, I Use Lame (3.90.3) with Monkey Audio to encode to MP3 and transfer to my MP3 player.

How easy or difficult is it to set up WavePack with EAC?
Then, what would I use/how convert WavePak files to MP3?

Advantages/disadvantages of WavePak over Monkey Audio?

Thanks in advance!

[GeSomeone]

Advantages/disadvantages of WavePak over Monkey Audio?

Please have a look in the "Lossless Codecs" section especially the topic Which is the best lossless codec