Aiff Vs Mp3

[Ray Kowalewski]

AudioInterchange File Format (AIFF) is an audio file format standard used for storing sound data for personal computers and other electronic audio devices. The format was developed by Apple Inc. in 1988 based on Electronic Arts' Interchange File Format (IFF, widely used on Amiga systems) and is most commonly used on Apple Macintosh computer systems.

The file extension for the standard AIFF format is .aiff or .aif. For the compressed variants it is supposed to be .aifc, but .aiff or .aif are accepted as well by audio applications supporting the format.

Because the AIFF architecture has no provision for alternative byte order, Apple used the existing AIFF-C compression architecture, and created a "pseudo-compressed" codec called sowt (twos spelled backwards). The only difference between a standard AIFF file and an AIFF-C/sowt file is the byte order; there is no compression involved at all.[5]

Apple uses this new little-endian AIFF type as its standard on macOS. When a file is imported to or exported from iTunes in "AIFF" format, it is actually AIFF-C/sowt that is being used. When audio from an audio CD is imported by dragging to the macOS Desktop, the resulting file is also an AIFF-C/sowt. In all cases, Apple refers to the files simply as "AIFF", and uses the .aiff extension.

For the vast majority of users this technical situation is completely unnoticeable and irrelevant. The sound quality of standard AIFF and AIFF-C/sowt are identical, and the data can be converted back and forth without loss. Users of older audio applications, however, may find that an AIFF-C/sowt file will not play, or will prompt the user to convert the format on opening, or will play as static.

Apple has also created another recent extension to the AIFF format in the form of Apple Loops[6] used by GarageBand and Logic Pro, which allows the inclusion of data for pitch and tempo shifting by an application in the more common variety, and MIDI-sequence data and references to GarageBand playback instruments in another variety.

AIFF files can store metadata in Name, Author, Comment, Annotation, and Copyright chunks. An ID3v2 tag chunk can also be embedded in AIFF files, as well as an Application Chunk with Extensible Metadata Platform (XMP) data in it.[8]

AIFF supports only uncompressed PCM data. AIFF-C also supports compressed audio formats, which can be specified in the "COMM" chunk. The compression type is "NONE" for PCM audio data. The compression type is accompanied by a printable name. Common compression types and names include, but are not limited to:

I'll launch my project. Some audio files will be offline. I will attempt to "Link Media" but if the file name doesn't have the extension in it, it will not recognize the file. There is the option in the Link Media window under Match File Properties to select File Extension but it doesn't seem to make a difference.

I dont know what industry you are in Jim, but wav is not the standard, thats a PC thing. My issue is AE CC 2018 is no longer importing Aif files with markers that you embed in Audition, which makes syncing graphics a lot harder. 2017 did it. Why is Adobe so good at taking 2 steps back all the time on some things.

Im sure its a bug, you are experiencing Jim, Im finding all kinds of bugs in AE CC 2018, I wish i had never upgraded i might roll back. There is a huge memory from disk cache thing going on, where it displays cached versions of what you have done not what is current, you have to purge the disk cache constantly. and now you cant import meta data with an aif file, sucks, im starting to have a love/hate thing with Adobe.

Am also having this problem having updated to CC 2018. Trying to open an old project to do some changes and none of the imported aiff sound will reconnect as says it's not supported. Any help would be appreciated.

I used a little used feature of OSX to batch rename lots of my AIFF files. I went to the folder where all the old files were, selected them all and right clicked ... scroll down and select "rename XX files". Once the dialog comes up, select add text in the selection box on the left and type in ".aiff" in the window on the right.

Hi,can anyone out there clear this confusing/worrying matter up for me? i heard somewhere that .aif files are not the same as .AIFF files in that there is a degree of compression in the former and none in the latter also that this is the default encoding in OsX when importing audio files from CD via drag & drop into the finder. In fact some apps such as recycle will not import them until they are un-compressed back into AIFF format. are .aif files basically just AIFC encoded files and if this is indeed OsX default import option is there any way I can change it without having to import every audio file using quicktime or 3rd party app?

I just did a little experiment with Amadeus Pro (simple waveform editor program). I dragged a file off a CD, which has the suffix .aiff, opened it in Amadeus, and saved it as a new file. Amadeus will save all of its AIFF files with the suffix .aif. Looking at the two files they are identical in size, which means they are exactly the same.

Here is my conclusion: there is no difference between the suffix .aiff and the suffix .aif. They are both AIFF files. That being said, you can have an AIFF file that is compressed or uncompressed, but the suffix alone, .aiff or .aif, will not tell you whether that AIFF file is compressed or not.

so basically they're the same except (Little Endian) are compressed and (Big Endian) are un-compressed? something very weird is going on here because all my old commercially released sample cd's are being imported as compressed (little Endian) aiff's and as a consequence rendered unreadable by some apps which never used to happen in Os9. Could OsX be converting them on the way in? they're showing up that way when i get info directly from the CD via the quicktime inspector.

Anything from a CD that can play in a CD player (as opposed to a data or mp3 cd) is going to be uncompressed. If you drag a track off of a CD and onto your desktop, it will be uncompressed. Doesn't matter whether the suffix is .aif or .aiff, they're both exactly the same.

In fact, I"ve never come across any AIFF file, whether it has a suffix of .aif or .aiff, that is compressed. All audio samples, CD's, etc. that are AIFF files are uncompressed. When you bounce a file from Logic that is an AIFF file, the file ends up with a suffix of .aif, but is also a fully uncompressed AIFF file. The only time I've seen or used compressed AIFF files is when I saved them that way on purpose.

Again, if you're copying a file from a CD onto your machine, it will be uncompressed. Unless your importing a CD into iTunes, it will copy the file in the same format it's in on the CD. If an application can't open it because it has a suffix of .aif instead of .aiff, it just means that that application is confused about the tag of .aif, not that the file is different or compressed in some weird way. Just manually change the suffix of the file to .aiff if that's the problem, and you apps should be able to read them.

hi, sorry if I lost you a bit, but that is exactly what i have always thought, an aif is an aiff is an aif.. but there appears to be two types: aiff or .aif (Big Endian) and .aiff or .aif (LIttle Endian) the latter being the problem 'compressed' file that won't import into say 'recycle.

When i get info with the quicktime inspector directly from the CD, the files are showing up as .aif (Little Endian) files. I then have to re-encode them using a 3rd party app converting them to .aif (Big Endian) before recycle will read them? welcome to the twilight zone....??

phew, now thats clearer. i guess this is an issue with propellerhead/recycle software and to a degree peak pro's confusing status bar which reads 'importing compressed file' when importing these files.

Thanks for all your help in clearing that up guys, looks like ill have to carry on batch converting whenever i'm using these apps. I will leave some info on the propellerheads forum on this one because tech support there seem to think this is a compression issue too.

All of my music is in AIFF format, on an external SSD drive formatted as ExFat. Permissions seem to be in order, at least from the limited information I can glean under the 'get info' tab within macOS.

Even wierder - about 30% of my music shows no tags at all within MP3Tag. Opening the same file within, Fission - and Im seeing all the missing tag info (Fission is not a library, so its grabbing that info directly from the file)

Update - MP3s seem to be behaving normally and are saveable. I was under the impression that AIFF files were supported. Is this not the case? since my collection is all aiff, would be a very unfortunate dealbreaker! Hope someone can lend some insights..

Many thanks for the two example AIFF files. I've analyzed them and they both contained RIFF chunks with extra bytes that exceeded the reported size from the RIFF header. Phrasing this more clearly, the files had internal inconsistencies and Mp3tag refused to write to them. This is a safety measure I'm taking with Mp3tag.

p.s. sensational app on the files its worked on - really great and so, so very much faster than any other software that writes tags to audio files. Thank you for taking the time and effort to address my specific issue, really appreciate it!

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