Anyone hear of WavePack lossless audio codec? .wv

[Audioarchivist]

Does anyone know anything about .wv files? WavePack it seems to be called. I ran into this the other day getting a Beatles CD off this guy's Beatle lossless Blog Download site, and the files are compressed into .wv files... then further compressed into a Stuff It archive for downloading.... Other things on site were >flac or .ape or .shn , but this one's wierd and new to me.
With much trial and error I did find a way to convert to .wav files, but couldn't figure how to start (or really find) a proper converter program like FLAC frontend or TLH. NeroPlayer converted it with the right plugin, but other plugins all made their programs crash. Cool edit por and winamp wouldn't do it for me at all (crashing)

Here's the codec site I'm talking about:
http://www.wavpack.com/downloads.html
Does anybody know anything about how .wv files compare to .flac or.shn or .ape?
Wondering how 'lossless' these are, and if there's an easier way to listen and convert these??

[Five]

there was some talk about it over here:
http://www.thetradersden.org/forums/...ead.php?t=6201

Wavpack can be either lossy or lossless, depending on the settings used during encoding.

search around, read some of the stuff that's been said then post back (preferably in one of the threads on the topic already existing).

[blessmanlessenne]

WV, short for WavPack, is a free and open source lossless audio compression format providing lossless, high-quality lossy, and a unique hybrid compression mode.

[tonebloke]

dBpowerAmp can handle wavepack.

[aikowolf]

xAct for OS X will too