  wavpack is a free and open-source lossless audio compression format. ==features== wavpack compression (.wv files) can compress (and restore) 8-, 16-, 24-, and 32-bit fixed-point, and 32-bit floating point audio files in the .wav file format. it also supports surround sound streams and high frequency sampling rates. like other lossless compression schemes, the data reduction rate varies with the source, but it is generally between 30% and 70% for typical popular music and somewhat better than that for classical music and other sources with greater dynamic range. ===hybrid mode=== wavpack also incorporates a "hybrid" mode which still provides the features of lossless compression, but it creates two files: a relatively small, high-quality, lossy file (.wv) that can be used by itself; and a "correction" file (.wvc) that, when combined with the lossy file, provides full lossless restoration. this allows the use of lossy and lossless codecs together. a similar "hybrid" feature is also offered by optimfrog dualstream, mpeg-4 sls and dts-hd master audio. ===summary=== *open source, released under a bsd-like license *multiplatform *error robustness *streaming support *supports multichannel audio and high resolutions *hybrid/lossy mode *hardware support (provided by rockbox firmware) *metadata support (id3v1, ape tags) *supports riff chunks *replaygain compatible *ability to create self extracting files for the win32 platform *supports 32-bit floating point streams *supports embedded cue sheets *includes md5 hashes for quick integrity checking *can encode in both symmetrical and asymmetrical (slower encoding to speed up decoding) modes ==history== david bryant started development on wavpack in mid-1998 with the release of version 1.0 (1998-08-15). this first version compressed and decompressed audio losslessly, and it already featured one of the best efficiency vs. speed ratios among lo
Computer_file_formats Free_audio_codecs Free_audio_software Lossless_audio_codecs