How to convert WavPack files in two shakes

Last updated on July 22, 2024 by , Posted to convert audio

convert wv files on windows

I encountered WV files many years ago and my usual Winamp player could not play them, although such support was declared. It was necessary to download an updated plugin for the player before everything worked. For a long time I thought that this format had ceased to exist, as well as Winamp, but it turned out that both were alive!

1 What is WavPak?

The WV audio file format uses the WavPack compression algorithm developed by David Bryant. This codec compresses slightly better than FLAC, and also offers hybrid lossy encoding similar to DTS-MA and the like, with a "master" version of the lossy audio and an equalization file that can be combined with the "master" to restore the original audio. The master file has the extension WV, and the recovery file has the extension WVC.

As a result, this gives us a flexible system where a collection of records is stored without loss of quality, and at the same time we do not need to re-encode files into another format - we can simply copy only one WV file.

There is no point in using this format for lossy compression, since it is inferior in every way to the much more popular AAC. But with lossless compression, this format looks more interesting. In terms of compression, it is ahead of FLAC and in addition supports 32-bit samples.

2 Using WavPak: Pros and Cons

Despite the fact that the format has limited hardware support, it can still be considered exotic. Judging by the history of changes, the format itself has been stuck in the past for a long time and has changed little over the past 10 years.

We could go on and on about the benefits of this format, but the facts speak for themselves: WV doesn't provide native playback support on Windows and Mac, so you can't play WV files directly in Windows Media Player or add them to your iTunes library. Things are no better with mobile operating systems.

Yes, I know that the codec developer offers command line utilities for working with files in the WavPack format, but this is clearly not what MacOS and Windows users are used to.

The second fact is that the main advantage of the format in the form of "hybrid" compression has even more limited support. Therefore, not every WavPack player will read the second file to recover losses. Even such a well-known tool as ffmpeg does not support this mode.

However, there is a very interesting concept of using WavPak's hybrid mode for storing Hi-Res audio. As you can imagine, such files are huge due to the 4608 kbps bitrate and storing them on disk with lossless compression is too wasteful. But you can only store master .WV files on HDD, which have a high degree of compression and can be used for preliminary listening, and .WVC restoration files can be stored separately, on optical media or in the cloud.

Another area of application for this file could be audio loggers. When we were working on a new version of a multi-channel audio recorder, we were faced with the need to store up to 32 channels of uncompressed audio in one file. WavPak turned out to be the only lossless compression format that supports up to 255 channels.

After publishing the article, I realized I forgot to mention another important point. The WV codec has another unique feature: it supports sample compression in 32-bit floating point format. I'll explain why this is so important. This format doesn't have the clipping issues that other formats do, and it's often used in audio editing. When saving intermediate editing results, you have a choice between uncompressed audio and... WavPak. Any other options will mean you lose out on bit precision.

3 Choice of converter for WavPak

For myself, I chose FLAC for lossless compression and AAC for lossy compression. And so far not a single important factor has appeared that could change my choice.

To work with WavPak, the first thing you need is a good WV converter. You may have tried many audio converters but were unable to complete this task. Fortunately, all conversion problems can be easily solved with Audio Converter Plus. This software can do almost all audio conversions, sample rate conversion and volume normalization.

One important feature is the ability to save the directory structure, so that files in the new format are organized into their original folders in a new location instead of being lumped together.

Now you might be wondering about online solutions. Well, it depends on the type of compression used. WV files that contain DSD-rips with lossless compression are too large for online converters, and "hybrid" compression stores the data in two separate files, which is not supported by online converters at all. So you can only use cloud converters with lossy compressed WavPack files.


wavpack converter

4 Step-by-step instructions

Before start, please free download the WavPack converter from the link above and install it on your Windows 11/10/8/7/Vista.

Step 1 - Import WV Files

Launch Audio Converter Plus and click "Add Files" to import source files to the program or drag and drop the WV audio directly into it.

Step 2 - Select FLAC as Output Format

Use "Output Format" dropdown menu. You can see that there are many available audio formats. This time, I set "FLAC" as the output format. This program allows you to convert the sampling rate on "Setting" window. By converting the samoling rate to lower one, you can compress audio to smaller size.

Step 3 - Convert WV to FLAC in Batches

Return to main interface. Click the orange "Convert" in the center of toolbar to start conversion. It only takes a few seconds to finish the conversion. Just check your preset output folder and play the audio freely.

5 Final words

Well, that seems to be it. I described the format itself, its advantages and disadvantages, and suggested one of the options for converting from WavPak to FLAC. By the way, in case you still decide to use WavPak to store audio, reverse conversion is carried out in the same way. The final decision is always yours.


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