The Audio Interchange File Format (AIFF) is an Apple Mac OSX audio file format, usually denoted by files using either the AIFF or AIF file extension. You can now use Zamzar to convert AIFF or AIF files into a variety of other audio formats using our online conversion tool.
AIFF files tend to be much larger in size than compressed audio files such as MP3, because it is an uncompressed and lossless audio format. This can be useful for preserving audio quality and allowing more rapid streaming of audio files from disk to applications, but filesizes can grow to be large, very quickly. The format tends to appear most often on Mac OSX systems.
If you need to convert an AIFF or AIF file Zamzar now supports conversion to all of the following formats:
- aac – Advanced Audio Coding File
- ac3 – AC3 Audio File
- flac – Free Lossless Audio Codec
- m4a – Compressed video file
- m4r – iPhone Ringtone File
- mp3 – Compressed audio file
- mp4 – MPEG-4 Video File
- ogg – Ogg Vorbis Compressed Audio File
- wav – Windows audio file
- wma – Windows Media Audio
AIFF – A potted history
The AIFF format has a long (and somewhat glorious) history.
Originally developed by Apple Computers in 1988 for the Mac OSX operating system, it was based on the Interchange File Format (IFF) developed by Electronic Arts, which was designed to ease the transfer of data between software produced by different companies. IFF files were widely used on Commodore Amiga systems, most notably for various graphic formats.
According to the official AIFF specification document the new AIFF format was “… the result of several meetings held with music developers over a period of ten months in 1987-88” – back in the days of an unusually collaborative Apple Computing 🙂
Happy converting,
The Zamzar Team.
[Amiga image credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/quagmirez31/4046472613]
