.WV File Format

Introduction

WavPack is an open audio compressor by David Bryant, first released in 1998. Its normal mode is lossless. Its hybrid mode writes a smaller lossy .wv file plus a correction file (.wvc); played together they give back the exact original, and the .wv file alone still plays.

WavPack handles integer and floating-point samples and multichannel audio, and is supported by many players and audio editors.

Structure

A WavPack file is a series of blocks. Each block starts with a 32-byte header: the ID wvpk, the block size, the format version, the total number of samples in the file, the index of the block’s first sample, the number of samples in the block, flags (bit depth, mono or stereo, hybrid mode, float data and others) and a CRC. Sub-blocks of metadata and audio data follow inside each block. Numbers are little-endian. Tags, usually APEv2, are stored at the end of the file.

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