Un viaggio alle origini della compressione audio digitale attraverso una storica intervista di TiempoLibre a David Bryant, creatore di WavPack. Dalla nascita del progetto alla filosofia degli standard aperti, passando per Linux, Ogg Vorbis e il futuro dell’audio ad alta risoluzione.
Le Interviste di TL
Dall’archivio storico di TiempoLibreSite.com recuperiamo oggi una delle interviste dedicate ai protagonisti dell’informatica e dell’open source.
Ospite di questa puntata è David Bryant, creatore di WavPack, formato e progetto dedicato alla compressione audio lossless e ibrida.
L’intervista fu realizzata da Bodom e viene oggi riproposta nella sua lingua originale, l’inglese, mantenendo le risposte e i contenuti dell’epoca.
Riletta a distanza di anni, la conversazione offre uno spaccato particolarmente interessante della storia dell’audio digitale: Bryant racconta la nascita di WavPack negli anni Novanta, la scelta della licenza BSD, il rapporto con l’open source e soprattutto la sua convinzione nell’importanza degli standard aperti.
Nota della redazione: questa intervista appartiene all’archivio storico di TiempoLibre e riflette tecnologie, progetti e scenari esistenti al momento della pubblicazione originale. Il testo inglese è stato sottoposto esclusivamente a una revisione editoriale di refusi, punteggiatura e formulazione delle domande, senza alterare il significato delle risposte di David Bryant.
Interview with David Bryant, creator of WavPack
From California to digital audio
Bodom: Who is David Bryant in real life? How old are you? Are you married? Do you have children? Tell us something more about yourself.
David Bryant: I was born and raised in California and have lived here all my life. I am 48 years old, I have been married for 8 years — my wife is from Romania — and we have a cat.
The birth of WavPack
Bodom: When did you have the idea for WavPack? What motivated you to create it?
David Bryant: I started working on digital audio projects in the early 1990s, experimenting with both lossless and lossy compression.
I originally wrote the precursor to WavPack in about 1997. I didn’t know about Shorten or LPAC, but I wanted to be able to archive full audio CDs as WAV files on a CD-R, and many of them would not fit.
The first release of WavPack was in 1998, which makes it the oldest of the lossless compressors still being actively developed.
An unexpected success
Bodom: Your project has become very popular. Did you expect WavPack to achieve this level of popularity?
David Bryant: No, it has been a surprise to me to see WavPack become as popular as it has.
It has been especially gratifying to see WavPack support appear on hardware devices like portable music players and home media servers, and in the open source project FFmpeg.
The future of WavPack
Bodom: What is the future of the WavPack project?
David Bryant: The next version will have an improvement to the quality of the hybrid mode — dynamic noise shaping — and I have added many new features to the Winamp plugin. These are both available now as alpha versions.
For me, the most interesting application of the WavPack hybrid mode is for the distribution and storage of high-resolution audio, like 24/96, where conventional lossy codecs like MP3 and AAC don’t make any sense and purely lossless codecs are too wasteful.
Beyond WavPack: Livescribe
Bodom: What about your future projects?
David Bryant: About five months ago I started working for a startup company, Livescribe, that has just started shipping its first product: a pen that records both audio and what you write, and then links them together.
It’s very exciting work, but unfortunately it does take some time away from WavPack!
Why the BSD license?
Bodom: Why don’t you use an open source license?
David Bryant: Well, I assume that you mean the GPL, because WavPack is released under another open source license, the BSD license.
I chose the BSD license because I wanted WavPack to be used as widely as possible in both commercial and free projects, and the GPL is generally not well accepted for commercial applications.
Thoughts on Ogg Vorbis
Bodom: What do you think about Ogg Vorbis?
David Bryant: I have never used Vorbis myself — because I use WavPack — but I am happy to see support for it starting to appear on portable devices.
It’s great to have a free and open alternative to the “big boys”.
Open source and open standards
Bodom: What do you think about open source?
David Bryant: I don’t have particularly strong feelings about open source.
I think open source is great — I use Linux at home — but I think there is nothing inherently wrong with commercial software, and I even have some ideas for software applications I might write and try to sell in the future.
However, I do feel strongly about open standards.
I think that proprietary data and file formats are inherently monopolistic and do not serve the public well, and I have been happy to see governments, like the state of Massachusetts, start to understand the importance of this and move to require that state business be done only with open standards.
A message to the Italian readers of TiempoLibre
Bodom: Would you like to say something to the Italian readers of TiempoLibreSite.com?
David Bryant: I was surprised to notice recently that Italy is the biggest foreign visitor to the WavPack website.
In the past it was Germany and Japan, but Italy now consistently beats them both!
So I have to thank the Italian people for their support — and generous donations.
Many years ago I visited Italy, including Milan and Venice, and really enjoyed the warmth of the Italian people and the beautiful countryside.
I certainly plan to bring my wife back there one of these days!
Un pezzo di storia dell’audio digitale
A distanza di anni, alcune frasi pronunciate da David Bryant assumono un valore particolare.
WavPack nasce infatti in un periodo nel quale archiviare un intero CD audio rappresentava ancora un problema concreto di spazio: Bryant racconta di aver iniziato a sviluppare il predecessore del formato nel 1997, cercando un sistema che gli permettesse di conservare audio WAV su CD-R senza rinunciare alla qualità originale.
Particolarmente significativa è anche la distinzione fatta da Bryant tra open source e open standards.
Pur dichiarandosi favorevole all’open source e utilizzatore di Linux, il creatore di WavPack sottolineava soprattutto l’importanza di evitare che dati e documenti diventassero dipendenti da formati proprietari.
Un dibattito che, nonostante l’enorme evoluzione tecnologica avvenuta da allora, conserva ancora oggi una sorprendente attualità.
Ed è proprio questo lo spirito con cui TiempoLibre recupera il proprio archivio: raccontare la tecnologia non soltanto attraverso ciò che sta accadendo oggi, ma anche attraverso le persone e le idee che hanno contribuito a costruire il mondo digitale che utilizziamo ogni giorno.