LossyWAV and/or WavPack, Any benefits/drawbacks in combining hybrid and LW? Options

[The Sheep of DEA...]

I just realized I have WavPack support on every tech device I have, from my old cell phone (in TCPMP and Coreplayer) to my new one (Android) to my linux box to my windows box (foobar et al). Since I'd never even noticed this shockingly ubiquitous format before, I decided to give it a shot (is it still under development? Bryant?). But because it is often heralded as a "lossless" format (which it is), and given my successes with LossyFLAC, I thought I'd put two and two together to make LossyWV as described in the HA wiki.

But then it hit me. WavPack is a hybrid format already. So then why is coupling it to "LossyWV" suggested on the main LossyWAV page? Does this mean LossyWV is potentially better at, say, 320kbps, than native hybrid-mode WavPack? Should the two be used together (horrific images of lossy transcoding come to mind)?

[bryant]

This is certainly the first time I have heard WavPack described as “shockingly ubiquitous”, but I certainly will not propose any fierce rebuttal. It is definitely still being developed, and in fact I plan on doing some significant work on it during the latter half of this year.

As shadowking points out, both LossyWAV and WavPack’s hybrid mode have advantages and disadvantages. I would someday like to add a VBR “quality based” mode to WavPack hybrid (which would counter one advantage of LossyWAV) but it would never have the very elegant “future proof” feature of LossyWAV. The advantages of WavPack hybrid are that it provides higher quality at an equivalent bitrate and that the correction files are actually usable in some (but not all) playback situations.

Finally, I would certainly not recommend encoding LossyWAV files with WavPack lossy. You would basically get the disadvantages of both formats and none of the advantages of either!