i have a lot of albums that are in 32/384 wave pack i have them in this format for space saving reasons, the idea that i would have to convert them all to another format is just unacceptable, why Roon doesn’t support such a well know and used format is mind boggling, i literally can not think of another player that doesn’t support it, is this something that will change? Also it would be great if when you are in folder view that it would display the same way as when in the album view, showing the cover art and arrange in exactly the same was as the windows folde. Thanks
Maybe time to convert?
i have way to many albums in wave pack to bother converting surely it would be easier to just add support for wave pack, it not as if it would break Roon?
1 Like
There are ways to batch convert from WavPack to FLAC which would make the process easier.
There is a wavpack decoding support feature request that you can vote for and another here. It’s not a widely requested feature, so I’d think unlikely to be on Roon’s roadmap anytime soon.
What’s your alternative for those of us compressing DSD? Just one song can reach 1GB, the compression ratio is like 50%, it’s unreasonable to expect people to convert all their files because the most expensive music player software in the world still doesn’t support a well-known format.
Look, I get it. You’ve got a roadmap, competing priorities, limited dev resources. But we need to talk about WavPack support because this has gone on way too long.
For those upsampling with PGGB or working with DSD content, WavPack isn’t a niche, it’s literally the only lossless compression format that handles DSD. Without it, you’re looking at upwards of 5GB per song. That’s not a typo. Try building a library of any decent size and you’ll run out of space faster than you can say “just buy more drives.”
And yeah, storage is cheap, but that’s not the point. Network bandwidth isn’t infinite. Backup times matter. NAS performance matters. When your library takes literal days to back up or your network can’t stream reliably because the files are so bloated, you start questioning why your $800+ music player can’t handle what foobar2000 figured out 15 years ago. A product of this price should work FOR you, not you for it.
Roon positions itself as the premium solution for serious listeners. The price tag certainly reflects that positioning. But format support is the bare minimum, not a premium feature. You already support FLAC, ALAC, WAV, AIFF, and a bunch of others. WavPack uses the exact same PCM/DSD audio data, just packaged differently.
We’re not asking for some experimental proprietary codec here. WavPack has been stable and widely used for over 20 years. The reference implementation is open source, well-documented, and actively maintained. ffmpeg supports it. Lots of players support it. It’s not like you’d be pioneering uncharted territory.
3 Likes
I think you want this to go under Feedback so that Roon Labs sees it?
Agreed and the deed is done.
You’re right if you’re thinking about bandwidth to and from NAS, but keep in mind Roon is streaming uncompressed audio, so it won’t help with the bandwidth between server and endpoints. If bandwidth and storage space are of concern, I would reconsider purchasing DSD.
2 Likes
It doesn’t seem widely used, with little support for the WavPack feature suggestion.
You’re likely using the wrong backup solution if it takes days to back up after the full backup. Metadata changes and new additions to my library of over 1 TB takes a few minutes to both local storage and cloud using block-level backup.
1 Like
Does Roon itself distribute any codecs (other than in the Nucleus hardware products)? ROCK builds are responsible for downloading and installing FFmpeg for their own personal use. And my understanding is/was that Roon relied on Windows, macOS, and Linux internal OS codec support for other Roon installs. If so, adding a very niche codec may not be possible on all platforms, and Roon generally avoids multi platform fragmentation.
AJ
I think doing mental gymnastics against format support doesn’t really make sense when we’re talking about an $800 music player software, it would if we were in the forums of one of these projects:
foobar2000
Winamp
VLC Media Player
AIMP
Audirvana
Swinsian
MusicBee
Audacious
Clementine
Deadbeef
Amarok
Banshee
Poweramp
USB Audio Player PRO
Neutron Music Player
VLC for Mobile
mpv
MPD
Cmus
What’s the common denominator in all of those projects? They’re either free or cost a third of Roon, AND they support wavpack! Hobbyists can put wavpack support on their players during their free time and you’re implying that the people in charge of the most advanced and expensive music player in the world just can’t do it, give me a break 
2 Likes
The players aren’t cross platform, and use a plugin because WavPack isn’t natively supported by the OS.
Hello,
My translation might not be working correctly.
I work with .dsd/.dsf files, but I don’t have any songs that are 5 GB. Of course, the storage requirement is higher than with .flac (24-bit), but it’s acceptable for me. There might be .dsf songs that are 5 GB, but I don’t have any songs that large, and I have quite a few albums in .dsf format. My entire library is 4.5 TB, consisting only of FLAC and DSD files.
Nevertheless, I believe that Roon should be able to handle the WavePack format. The Roon forum alone, considering the total number of Roon users, doesn’t provide a very meaningful response. I think there’s a significant gray area here. I have friends who use Roon but aren’t technically active and don’t post or read the forum.
1 Like
I don’t know any of those players, but if @Alexander_Kaizer1 is right, then if $30 players can use a plugin to play WavPack, Roon DEFINITELY can do it too, sorry for being so direct, but there is simply no excuses here, format support is out of the question in a product like this, it’s not even a feature request, it’s the bare minimum in 2025.
It depends on the type. DSD512 is 8 times larger than DSD64. But even with stereo DSD512, you’d have to have an alost 15-minute track to get to 5GB.
2 Likes
But WavPack is simply not that popular, and because it isn’t bundled with any OS, requires development effort in Roon for a niche audience.
The thread in Feedback > Feature Suggestions says it all. There is little interest.
Perhaps a more successful effort would be to convince someone to add WavPack 5 support to ffmpeg?
Yeah, that’s Roon’s job, exactly like any other format. FLAC and DSF are also not bundled with any OS, wavpack is open-source and the libraries are very mature at this point.
Of course it requires effort, that’s Roon’s only job, playing music files is not an “extra” secondary feature like in a car’s audio system, it’s what Roon is selling.
You’re talking like if we were in a lawnmower forum and someone was requesting wavpack support 
$15 per month, or $830 total, that’s what Roon is getting paid for a music player, I don’t understand why you insist so much on opposing a very simple thing that clearly several people want, this won’t hurt you in any way, if you want to store hundreds of GBs of DSD music be my guest, but at least let us have this.
This is not quantum physics, and this is not volunteer work:
This is adding a simple format library to a very expensive software that’s supposed to be the best of the best.
Almost every other music player in the market did it (foobar2000, mpv, VLC, and Audirvana are multi-platform btw), so Roon can do it too!
2 Likes
I don’t think that’s fair, ffmpeg has way less resources to work with since they do everything for free, they only receive donations, so they have completely valid reasons to not have this unlike Roon.