David Bryant started developing WavPack in mid-1998, with the release of version 1.0. This first version compressed and decompressed audio losslessly, nothing else, but by then it already featured one of the best efficiency vs. speed ratios among lossless formats.

Very soon after the release of version 1.0, Bryant released v. 2.0, which featured lossy encoding (using only quantization for data reduction - no psychoacoustic process is applied to the stream).

In 1999 version 3.0 was released, which featured novelties such as a fast mode (with reduced compression ratio), compression of RAW files and error detection.

WavPack development is still going on, and a major feature added in late 3.x versions is the hybrid mode, where the encoder generates a lossy file and a correction file so that both can be decompressed back to the original PCM stream, or the lossy file can be decompressed alone with slight quality losses.

With version 3.97, the sources were released under a BSD license. Before that, WavPack was closed source freeware.

WavPack 4 has been released soon afterwards. It adds important features such as fast seeking, improved error robustness, multichannel and high resolution audio support, among others. All of this while offering a very good compression x speed ratio.

The official web site is available here.

Compression performance in my limited test: 52,73% (-h setting)

All files here were kindly contributed by David Bryant himself.


Date: 2006-03-20
Version: 4.31
Interface: Command line
Platform: DOS
Download: WVDOS431.ZIP - 160kB
Sources: WVSRC431.ZIP - 141kB

Date: 2003-02-18
Version: 3.97
Interface: Command line + plugins
Platform: Win32
Download: wavpack3.97.zip - 177kB
Sources: wpsources.zip - 94kB

Date: 2002-12-12
Version: 3.4
Interface: Command line
Platform: DOS
Download: wavpck34.zip - 86kB

Date: 2000-06-11
Version: 3.2
Interface: Command line
Platform: DOS
Download: wavpck32.zip - 78kB

Date: 1999-09-12
Version: 3.0
Interface: Command line
Platform: DOS
Download: WAVPACK3.ZIP - 80kB

Date: 1998-09-02
Version: 2.0
Interface: Command line
Platform: DOS
Download: WAVPACK2.ZIP - 45kB

Date: 1998-08-15
Version: 1.0
Interface: Command line
Platform: DOS
Download: WAVPACK1.ZIP - 43kB