File extension
.aiff
Audio Interchange File Format
.aiff files are Audio Interchange File Format audio: Apple's IFF-based container for uncompressed PCM audio, the macOS counterpart to WAV, used as a high-quality master format.
Known meanings
Formats and reference material for .aiff
Details
Format notes
Audio Interchange File Format (AIFF)
AIFF is an uncompressed audio format developed by Apple, based on Electronic Arts’
Interchange File Format (IFF). It is essentially the Apple-world counterpart to
Microsoft’s WAV: it stores linear PCM audio losslessly and is a common master and
interchange format in macOS audio production. The file is a chunked structure whose
COMM chunk records the number of channels, sample frames, sample size, and sample
rate, and whose SSND chunk holds the sound data.
A key detail distinguishing AIFF from WAV is byte order: AIFF stores samples big-endian, reflecting its Motorola-based origins, whereas WAV is little-endian. A variant, AIFF-C (AIFC), extends the format to allow compressed audio by adding a compression-type field, while plain AIFF remains uncompressed.
Preservation Notes
Like WAV, AIFF is well suited to preserving master audio because PCM is lossless
and the format is simple and widely supported; files are correspondingly large.
Record the sample rate, bit depth, and channel count, and note whether a file is
plain AIFF or AIFF-C. The common media type is audio/aiff (also audio/x-aiff).
Security Notes
As a chunked binary format, an AIFF parser should validate chunk sizes and the
COMM parameters against the actual sound data when reading untrusted files to
avoid over-reads driven by malformed length fields.
Further Reading
- AIFF format overview:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_Interchange_File_Format