Okay, so I decided to encode one of my classical music album... I followed the guide EAC and wavpack that is pinned on the wavpack subforum here on HA (using -h %s %d)

The original file size in .wav of the whole album is 444Mb, and when compressed to wavpack it goes down to 140Mb... is that normal...

when I check the info in foobar it is written that it is lossless... but I just want to make sure I didn't mess something up and that it is really lossless... and not compressed in the "hybrid mode" or something...

anyone can confirm that this looks, or doesn't look like a normal compress size for .wv

Welcome to the Wonderful World of WavPack

Actually, I have personally found that classical music compresses much easier than louder (rock) music. I believe it has to do with either range/voume or maybe the differences in the types of music, but classical, opera, and even acoustic guitar music has compressed much better than average rock music. I have found this on FLAC as well. I am sure others will pipe up here with better explanations than mine any minute now...

Depending on the album, I've had classical music shrunk down to 25 or 30% of the original size, and that's with FLAC, which doesn't compress as well as WavPack. Enjoy it: you won't always get ratios that good.

yes... i'm very amazed at the compression ratio! awesome
just for information, the album is erik satie - the early piano works

One of the reasons you may get better compression with certain recordings of classical music is the age of the recording. I have classical music CDs that were taken from mono recordings made in the 1950s... the tapes used at that time didn't pick up the dynamic range possible today... so there is just less to encode when compressing.

Although I believe WavPack is very well tested, whenever you are in doubt, you could just decompress your .wv file and compare it with the original.
I assume that music in the classical period is mathematically beautiful (or mathematically simple or more predictable), and so mixes well with a purely mathematical (=non-psychoacoustic) compression such as Wavpack. The compression ratio would be not so good for modern classical music, such as stravinsky, or even worse for atonal music, as such work is mathematically more complicated. rock music is generally very simple as music, but maybe the actual performance is quite "random" (mathematically less predictable) in a way... I'm not sure about that one.

Piano recordings, especially when they are noise-free (or quiet, or mono), offer excellent compression ratio. Enjoy it!

Also, IMO, rock has a lot of very high frequency sounds throughout the song, beginnig to end. Classical has many "quiet" (single instrument) parts where compression can be higher creating a lower average for the song.

Just watch the realtime bitrate while playing the song.

With the song Santeria by sublime, the beginning shows about 500 kbs (only guitar) then jumps to 1000 when the drums start (lots of high hat).

This opinion and $3.00 might buy you a coffee at starbucks....


Joe.

Load both the original WAV file and the WavPack file into Foobar.
Highlight them both in the playlist.
Right-click the highlighted files and select "Utils>Bit-compare tracks..."
That will tell you if the two files are bit-identical.

FYI, the above action requires foo_bitcompare to be installed.

Thanks, Mangix!

You're absolutely correct.

You can find the binary comparator ("foo_bitcompare") here:
http://www.foobar2000.com/components/index.html