What Is AIFF? Audio Interchange File Format Explained

Both formats store linear PCM audio and sound identical at the same bit depth and sample rate. AIFF derives from Electronic Arts' IFF container and historically stores samples big-endian, whereas WAV (RIFF-based) is little-endian- A distinction software handles invisibly today. AIFF's practical edge is metadata: it can embed ID3-style tags and artwork more reliably than WAV, so tagged lossless libraries in iTunes traditionally used AIFF. In a modern DAW the two are interchangeable- Export quality, plugin behaviour, and editing are unaffected by the choice.

AIFF supports bit depths from 8 to 32 bits and standard sample rates up to 192 kHz. CD-quality AIFF (16-bit / 44.1 kHz stereo) consumes about 10 MB per minute- Identical to WAV. A compressed variant, AIFF-C (or AIFC), exists but is rarely encountered outside legacy Mac software, so in practice you can treat every AIFF as uncompressed PCM. Like WAV, AIFF is effectively capped at 4 GB per file. Because there is no compression stage, encoding and decoding are instant, and re-saving during long editing sessions never causes generational quality loss.

Choose AIFF for recording, editing, and mastering on Apple systems, for delivering stems and masters to Mac-based collaborators, and for tagged lossless archives in Apple software. If cross-platform delivery matters more, WAV is interchangeable in quality and slightly more universally expected; if storage matters, FLAC or ALAC halve the size losslessly. Sample libraries and many software instruments also ship their sounds as AIFF, so producers handle the format daily without thinking about it.

AIFF plays natively on macOS and iOS and in every professional audio application on any platform. General-purpose Windows and Android players are less consistent- Some handle it fine, others ignore it- And its size makes it a poor sharing format regardless. For distribution, convert to a compressed format first.

The AIFF to MP3 converter turns bulky session exports into shareable files- Use 320 kbps for music masters or 128 kbps for voice demos. If a tool insists on AIFF input, MP3 to AIFF repackages your file as PCM (larger, but no quality is regained). Batch work is easy too- See converting multiple files at once. Uploading the large source file is the slow part; the conversion itself takes seconds, though guests should watch the file size limit with big 24-bit sessions.