WavPack Lossless Audio Compression Format Adds Multi-Threaded Encode/Decode

The WavPack open-source lossless wavefile compressor is as much as model 5.7 after a couple of yr in improvement. Making this new launch fairly notable is including multi-threaded encode and decode assist to the WavPack library and its CLI instruments.

The headline characteristic of WavPack 5.7 is now supporting multi-threading throughout the WavPack library for each encode and decode. The launch announement notes this will yield "6X or extra" quicker encode/decode for immediately’s multi-threaded programs… Indeed the multi-threading has been understanding nicely in a few of my preliminary assessments. Testing on the identical WAV enter file and evaluating the encode efficiency, single-threaded encode was ~23 seconds and with multi-threaded encode all the way down to ~3 seconds on an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X.

One caveat although is that the WavPack threading at the moment solely scales as much as 12 threads being supported. In any occasion these positive factors are an enormous speed-up for any comparatively current multi-core programs. Great seeing extra multi-threaded encode/decode taking place within the audio area.

This WavPack multi-threading depends on pthreads for POSIX platforms and native threads underneath Windows. WavPack 5.7 additionally now makes use of MinGW builds for all their Windows binaries as a consequence of delivering higher efficiency than the MSVC-based builds, surprisingly.

Downloads and extra particulars on the WavPack 5.7 launch by way of GitHub. I’ve additionally begun operating numerous WavPack benchmarks with the multi-threading enabled throughout numerous CPUs.