David Bryant started development on 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 sported one of the best efficiency vs. speed ratio among lossless encoders.

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 was applied to the stream).

In 1999, the developer released version 3.0, 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 + a correction file, so that both can be decompressed back to the original PCM stream, or the lossy file can be decompressed alone with sligh quality losses.

WavPack 4 has been recently released. It adds important features such as fast seeking, error robustness, multichannel support, etc.

The official web page is available here

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

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

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