# Install wavpack with Homebrew, apk, apt, dnf, MacPorts, Nix, pacman, scoop, zypper Hybrid lossless audio compression. Version 5.9.0 via Homebrew; verified from local package data. ## Install ```sh sudo av install brew:wavpack ``` Additional install commands: ### macOS - Homebrew (100%): ```sh brew install wavpack ``` Evidence: local Homebrew formula metadata - MacPorts (94%): ```sh sudo port install wavpack ``` Evidence: MacPorts ports tree: audio/wavpack/Portfile from https://api.github.com/repos/macports/macports-ports/git/trees/master?recursive=1 ### Linux - apk (92%): ```sh sudo apk add wavpack ``` Evidence: Alpine Linux edge package indexes: wavpack from https://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/community/x86_64/APKINDEX.tar.gz - Debian apt (92%): ```sh sudo apt install libwavpack-dev ``` Evidence: Debian stable package indexes: libwavpack-dev from https://deb.debian.org/debian/dists/stable/main/binary-amd64/Packages.xz - dnf (92%): ```sh sudo dnf install mingw32-wavpack ``` Evidence: Fedora Rawhide package metadata: mingw32-wavpack from https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/development/rawhide/Everything/x86_64/os/repodata/e5ca8ce900cd68f5419e1c39ae517343100b306336cbaeb70a3c153121d95094-primary.xml.zst - Nix (92%): ```sh nix profile install nixpkgs#wavpack ``` Evidence: nixpkgs package indexes: pkgs/by-name/wa/wavpack/package.nix from https://api.github.com/repos/NixOS/nixpkgs/git/trees/master?recursive=1 - pacman (92%): ```sh sudo pacman -S wavpack ``` Evidence: Arch Linux sync databases: wavpack from https://geo.mirror.pkgbuild.com/extra/os/x86_64/extra.db.tar.gz - zypper (92%): ```sh sudo zypper install libwavpack1 ``` Evidence: openSUSE Tumbleweed package metadata: libwavpack1 from https://download.opensuse.org/tumbleweed/repo/oss/repodata/be8d3611d25469107f32075a1697e69ec57a2b850b42348a658cc671ad5ec2b50760d02c3e59524d50da9a11d5be799bdaffba2e166e8ca8858512e3c0bd665d-primary.xml.zst ### Windows - Scoop (92%): ```sh scoop install main/wavpack ``` Evidence: Scoop official bucket manifest trees: bucket/wavpack.json from https://api.github.com/repos/ScoopInstaller/Main/git/trees/master?recursive=1 ## Package facts - **Package key:** brew:wavpack - **Package manager:** Homebrew - **Package manager page:** - **Version:** 5.9.0 - **Source summary:** Hybrid lossless audio compression - **Homepage:** - **Repository:** - **Upstream docs:** - **License:** BSD-3-Clause - **Source archive:** - **Generated:** 2026-07-08T07:18:31+00:00 ## Executables - wavpack (cli) - wvgain (cli) - wvtag (cli) - wvunpack (cli) - wavpack (alias) - wvgain (alias) - wvtag (alias) - wvunpack (alias) ## Install behavior - Post-install hook: not defined - Bottle: available on arm64_linux, arm64_sequoia, arm64_sonoma, arm64_tahoe, sonoma, x86_64_linux ## Freshness - Page generated: 2026-07-08 - Package-manager version: 5.9.0 - Local data: ok - Upstream repository: https://www.wavpack.com/ - info: No package-manager update timestamp was available. - info: Release/tag comparison is only available for GitHub repositories. ## Project history and usage WavPack is David Bryant's open audio compression format, reference library, and command-line toolset. It is best known for combining ordinary lossless audio compression with a distinctive hybrid mode that can produce a standalone lossy `.wv` file plus a `.wvc` correction file for full lossless restoration. ### Project history Secondary histories and archived release listings trace WavPack back to David Bryant's mid-1998 development work and version 1.0 on August 15, 1998. Version 2.0 followed on September 2, 1998 with lossy encoding based on quantizing prediction residue rather than psychoacoustic masking, and version 3.0 arrived on September 12, 1999 with fast mode, raw PCM compression, and CRC error detection. The late 3.x series introduced the hybrid model that became WavPack's defining feature: a lossy file usable on its own plus a correction file that restores the original PCM stream when present. ReallyRareWares records that version 3.97, dated February 18, 2003, released the sources under a BSD license after WavPack had previously been closed-source freeware. WavPack 4 then introduced a new file format structure and a more modern feature set, including fast seeking, better robustness, multichannel and high-resolution audio support. The WavPack 5 era broadened the format from a WAV-centered compressor into a more general audio archiving tool. The official site says version 5.0.0 added several new file formats and lossless DSD audio compression, and the changelog dates 5.0.0 to December 6, 2016 with RF64, Wave64, CAF, Philips DSDIFF, Sony DSF, very large file support, block checksums, non-standard channel identities, and streaming-oriented decoding improvements. Later releases added wvtag, fuzzing and CI hardening, AIFF support, multithreading, BW64 recognition, improved ID3 handling, and version 5.9.0 on January 16, 2026. ### Adoption history WavPack has long had a dual adoption pattern: audiophile/archival users who value efficient lossless storage and hybrid correction files, and software ecosystems that need a permissive, open implementation. The official site lists support across players, editors, rippers, taggers, and media frameworks, including foobar2000, JRiver MediaCenter, Audacity, Winamp plugins, Reaper, FL Studio, VLC, SoX, GStreamer-enabled Linux distributions, FFmpeg/avconv, MPD, DeaDBeeF, X Lossless Decoder, and many others. Hardware and firmware support also gave WavPack a place in portable audio culture. The official site highlights Rockbox playback and recording support across many older portable music players, Cowon devices as early native-support examples, and later high-end portable players and media players that advertise WavPack playback. Hydrogenaudio summarizes WavPack as a feature-rich lossless compressor with broad software support, Direct Stream Digital support, and practical caution that some advanced features are best handled through the official tools rather than limited third-party encoders. ### How it is used The reference distribution centers on `wavpack` for encoding, `wvunpack` for decoding/restoration, `wvgain` for ReplayGain analysis, and `wvtag` for APEv2 metadata. The official manual describes batch operation, wildcard input, stdin/stdout piping, raw PCM handling, reencoding existing WavPack files while copying tags, safe overwrite behavior through temporary files, progress reporting, and the ability to preserve headers and metadata so lossless restoration is bit-identical to the original file. Hybrid mode is the specialist workflow: users choose a target bitrate with `-b` or the newer `-c` shortcut, optionally create a correction file, keep the `.wv` as a smaller portable listening copy, and archive `.wv` plus `.wvc` together for lossless recovery. Pure lossless mode is used for ordinary audio archiving, while WavPack 5's DSD and large-file support made it useful for SACD-derived DSF/DFF material and other non-CD archival sources. ### Why package nerds care WavPack matters to package nerds because it is both a codec format and a reference C library with real downstream surface area: command-line tools, libwavpack, plugins, media-framework integration, fuzzing history, assembly optimizations, file-format documentation, and distro-packaged development libraries. It also occupies a rare design point among audio codecs: permissive licensing, open specification, lossless/hybrid operation, DSD support, metadata tooling, and archival attention to restoring non-audio chunks. ### Timeline - 1998-08-15: WavPack 1.0 is released for DOS with lossless compression and decompression. - 1998-09-02: WavPack 2.0 adds lossy encoding. - 1999-09-12: WavPack 3.0 adds fast mode, raw PCM compression, and CRC error detection. - 2003-02-18: Version 3.97 sources are released under a BSD license. - 2006-03-20: WavPack 4.31 era reflects the post-WavPack-4 file format and feature transition. - 2016-12-06: WavPack 5.0.0 adds multiple input formats, DSD compression, large-file support, block checksums, and streaming-oriented decoder changes. - 2024-02-29: WavPack 5.7.0 adds optional multithreaded encoding and decoding. - 2026-01-16: WavPack 5.9.0 is released with tag-copy support and additional robustness fixes. ### Related projects - WavPack is commonly discussed alongside FLAC, ALAC, Monkey's Audio, OptimFROG, MPEG-4 ALS, TAK, FFmpeg, GStreamer, Rockbox, foobar2000, SoX, and audio tagging/replaygain tools. Its hybrid correction-file model is closest in spirit to OptimFROG DualStream and later scalable/layered lossless ideas such as MPEG-4 SLS and DTS-HD Master Audio. ### Sources - - - - - - - ## Security Notes broad file, network, media, or database tool signal. - **Geiger risk:** blue / medium - broad file, network, media, or database tool signal ## Source Database Details - **Source Database:** Homebrew formula API - **Tap:** homebrew/core - **Full Name:** wavpack - **Version Scheme:** 0 - **Revision:** 0 - **Head Version:** HEAD - **Bottle Stable Root URL:** - **Deprecated:** no - **Disabled:** no - **Keg Only:** no - **URL Keys:** head, stable ## Other Package-Manager Records - Debian apt - libwavpack-dev - 5.8.1-1: normalized package name match | Debian stable package indexes: libwavpack-dev from https://deb.debian.org/debian/dists/stable/main/binary-amd64/Packages.xz | audio codec (lossy and lossless) - development files | http://www.wavpack.com - Debian apt - libwavpack1 - 5.8.1-1: normalized package name match | Debian stable package indexes: libwavpack1 from https://deb.debian.org/debian/dists/stable/main/binary-amd64/Packages.xz | audio codec (lossy and lossless) - library | http://www.wavpack.com - Debian apt - wavpack - 5.8.1-1: normalized package name match | Debian stable package indexes: wavpack from https://deb.debian.org/debian/dists/stable/main/binary-amd64/Packages.xz | audio codec (lossy and lossless) - encoder and decoder | http://www.wavpack.com - Nix - wavpack: normalized package name match | nixpkgs package indexes: pkgs/by-name/wa/wavpack/package.nix from https://api.github.com/repos/NixOS/nixpkgs/git/trees/master?recursive=1 - Ubuntu apt - libwavpack-dev - 5.6.0-1build1: normalized package name match | Ubuntu 24.04 LTS package indexes: libwavpack-dev from https://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/noble/main/binary-amd64/Packages.gz | audio codec (lossy and lossless) - development files | http://www.wavpack.com - Ubuntu apt - libwavpack1 - 5.6.0-1build1: normalized package name match | Ubuntu 24.04 LTS package indexes: libwavpack1 from https://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/noble/main/binary-amd64/Packages.gz | audio codec (lossy and lossless) - library | http://www.wavpack.com - Ubuntu apt - wavpack - 5.6.0-1build1: normalized package name match | Ubuntu 24.04 LTS package indexes: wavpack from https://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/noble/universe/binary-amd64/Packages.gz | audio codec (lossy and lossless) - encoder and decoder | http://www.wavpack.com - apk - wavpack - 5.9.0-r0: normalized package name match | Alpine Linux edge package indexes: wavpack from https://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/community/x86_64/APKINDEX.tar.gz | Audio compression format with lossless, lossy, and hybrid compression modes | https://www.wavpack.com/ - apk - wavpack-dev - 5.9.0-r0: normalized package name match | Alpine Linux edge package indexes: wavpack-dev from https://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/community/x86_64/APKINDEX.tar.gz | Audio compression format with lossless, lossy, and hybrid compression modes (development files) | https://www.wavpack.com/ - apk - wavpack-doc - 5.9.0-r0: normalized package name match | Alpine Linux edge package indexes: wavpack-doc from https://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/community/x86_64/APKINDEX.tar.gz | Audio compression format with lossless, lossy, and hybrid compression modes (documentation) | https://www.wavpack.com/ - apk - wavpack-libs - 5.9.0-r0: normalized package name match | Alpine Linux edge package indexes: wavpack-libs from https://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/community/x86_64/APKINDEX.tar.gz | Audio compression format with lossless, lossy, and hybrid compression modes (libraries) | https://www.wavpack.com/ - dnf - mingw32-wavpack - 5.9.0-2.fc45: normalized package name match | Fedora Rawhide package metadata: mingw32-wavpack from https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/development/rawhide/Everything/x86_64/os/repodata/e5ca8ce900cd68f5419e1c39ae517343100b306336cbaeb70a3c153121d95094-primary.xml.zst | WavPack - development files | https://www.wavpack.com/ - dnf - mingw32-wavpack-tools - 5.9.0-2.fc45: normalized package name match | Fedora Rawhide package metadata: mingw32-wavpack-tools from https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/development/rawhide/Everything/x86_64/os/repodata/e5ca8ce900cd68f5419e1c39ae517343100b306336cbaeb70a3c153121d95094-primary.xml.zst | WavPack - development files tools | https://www.wavpack.com/ - dnf - mingw64-wavpack - 5.9.0-2.fc45: normalized package name match | Fedora Rawhide package metadata: mingw64-wavpack from https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/development/rawhide/Everything/x86_64/os/repodata/e5ca8ce900cd68f5419e1c39ae517343100b306336cbaeb70a3c153121d95094-primary.xml.zst | WavPack - development files tools | https://www.wavpack.com/ - dnf - mingw64-wavpack-tools - 5.9.0-2.fc45: normalized package name match | Fedora Rawhide package metadata: mingw64-wavpack-tools from https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/development/rawhide/Everything/x86_64/os/repodata/e5ca8ce900cd68f5419e1c39ae517343100b306336cbaeb70a3c153121d95094-primary.xml.zst | WavPack - development files tools tools | https://www.wavpack.com/ - dnf - wavpack - 5.9.0-2.fc45: normalized package name match | Fedora Rawhide package metadata: wavpack from https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/development/rawhide/Everything/x86_64/os/repodata/e5ca8ce900cd68f5419e1c39ae517343100b306336cbaeb70a3c153121d95094-primary.xml.zst | A completely open audiocodec | https://www.wavpack.com/ ## Related links - [Secret-risk packages](https://www.automicvault.com/pkg/secret-risk-packages/) - Has protected-tool coverage, approval-gate, or non-low Geiger security signals. - [Terminal utility packages](https://www.automicvault.com/pkg/terminal-utilities/) - Matched terminal and command-line workflow metadata. - [Archive and compression packages](https://www.automicvault.com/pkg/archive-compression-tools/) - Matched archive or compression metadata. - [Networking and protocol packages](https://www.automicvault.com/pkg/networking-protocol-tools/) - Matched network, protocol, or remote-service metadata. - [audacious](https://www.automicvault.com/pkg/brew/audacious/) - Popular package that depends on this formula. - [easy-tag](https://www.automicvault.com/pkg/brew/easy-tag/) - Popular package that depends on this formula. - [mpd](https://www.automicvault.com/pkg/brew/mpd/) - Popular package that depends on this formula. - [qmmp](https://www.automicvault.com/pkg/brew/qmmp/) - Popular package that depends on this formula. - [sox_ng](https://www.automicvault.com/pkg/brew/sox-ng/) - Popular package that depends on this formula. - [flac](https://www.automicvault.com/pkg/brew/flac/) - Shares av.db curated category or tags: audio, cli, codec, lossless-compression, media. - [flake](https://www.automicvault.com/pkg/brew/flake/) - Shares av.db curated category or tags: audio, cli, codec, lossless-compression, media. - [tta](https://www.automicvault.com/pkg/brew/tta/) - Shares av.db curated category or tags: audio, cli, codec, media. - [two-lame](https://www.automicvault.com/pkg/brew/two-lame/) - Shares av.db curated category or tags: audio, cli, codec, media. - [vorbis-tools](https://www.automicvault.com/pkg/brew/vorbis-tools/) - Shares av.db curated category or tags: audio, cli, codec, media. - [abcde](https://www.automicvault.com/pkg/brew/abcde/) - Shares av.db curated category or tags: audio, cli, media. - [adplay](https://www.automicvault.com/pkg/brew/adplay/) - Shares av.db curated category or tags: audio, cli, media. - [adplug](https://www.automicvault.com/pkg/brew/adplug/) - Shares av.db curated category or tags: audio, cli, media. - [flif](https://www.automicvault.com/pkg/brew/flif/) - Local package facts share a topical domain. Shared terms: cli, codec, compression, lossless, media. ## Combined YAML source View the package source record on GitHub. [combined/wavpack.yml](https://github.com/automic-vault/db/blob/main/combined/wavpack.yml) ## Sources - Nucleus package database - Geiger risk classifier - package-page enrichment - curated package history - package version freshness - av.db category and tag curation - package relationship graph - external package-manager database matches - cross-ecosystem install command graph