Talk:Audio Interchange File Format

Lossy/lossless

There is no mention that this file format is lossy or lossless. Not sure; but it might be a nice thing to add.

Someone added that it's lossless, but i'm removing that because really it's neither one. Lossy/lossless refers to the type of compression used. AIFF is uncompressed. Bgruber 22:52, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

I think that we should remove lossy from the introduction. "...unlike the better-known lossy MP3 format, it is non-compressed." That seems a bit POV to me. Actually it's almost redundant. 68.50.209.182 (talk) 19:31, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

descriptive tags

do AIFF files contain meta data tags (e.g. ID3)? If yes, are they in the annotation chunk? Is their format standardized? Funkyj 00:45, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Cover art and other metadata tags

Through research and experimentation with iTunes, I seem to have established that while of course, all the lossy formats,: AAC, MP3 and Apple Lossless support metadata extensively, including embedding of cover art, and in fact so does AIFF, being partially based on Deluxe Paint image AND Amiga sound formats, WAV does not and is just a little-endian Microsoft flat piece of PCM data with no metadata support other than the filename itself. iTunes does not allow dragging of images to the covert art area for these files, but does allow you to (with iTunes 7) pull the data into a separate on-disk cache of cover art (in itc format - a gzipped/encrypted pict or tiff by any chance?) from ITMS but it cannot add cover art into the wav file. If you want to keep cover art and song info with the data when you move it between libraries and use true uncompressed lossless audio, I seem to have established that despite smaller market share, you should use AIFF instead of WAV. If others agree, this article should say something like:

"AIFF supports metadata tags and embedding of cover art and lyrics, whereas WAV does not."

--81.105.251.160 18:13, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Um.. no. Just because the iTunes shit do not support metadata in Wav files does not mean Wav does not support metadata. Keep in mind that both Wav and AIFF stem from Electronic Art's IFF format - with little changed.--Anss123 17:01, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

I

When was format invented?

When was .AIFF introduced? --24.249.108.133 01:42, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Not only that; while I appreciate the sowt info, there's more basic data missing from the article. I came here to find out more about maximum AIFF file length (2 GB). Valuable as the new info is, the article is still a stub vis a vis AIFF itself. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.100.244.88 (talk) 21:00, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

`Acronym'

The page remarks that `What meaning sowt may have as an acronym or abbreviation does not appear to be documented.' Erm... it looks fairly obvious. Is it not just `twos-complement', as some sort of pun on the changed bytesex? (not that I have a reference for this) NormanGray 20:28, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

This is now documented Boardhead (talk) 19:03, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

AIFF on Mac OS X

The section AIFF on Mac OS X doesn't seem to be correct. Especially the claim "Apple uses this new little-endian AIFF type as its standard on Mac OS X" seems to be wrong. See <http://lists.apple.com/archives/coreaudio-api/2009/Mar/thrd4.html#00358> and Apple's non-reply, notably <http://lists.apple.com/archives/coreaudio-api/2009/Mar/msg00400.html>. Microbizz (talk) 17:18, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Also, this page should definitely deal with .caf files, at least in reference... 209.204.163.15 (talk) 19:59, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

I don't think the account of what happens on OSX with AIFF files is accurate for - at least - El Capitan 5 or thereabouts.   I am finding, after a couple of weeks use of it that audio files made on, for example Audacity and specified as aiff by extension when I save them to desktop are immediately listed as aiff-c ( no indication of sowt, no indication of reason, no apology) as are aiff audio files from years back held on portable external hard drives I have reattached to the computer with the new operating system.  In fact, during the transfer process, the iTunes icon appears on the destination desktop location, though once the transfer is complete it is replaced by a neutral  white version - the psychology of this is depressingly transparent.  In a random way,  (apart from the icon behaviour) this tended to happen on a different Mac at another address after installing OSX 6.8.   The explanations from Apple are less that total.  I am keeping them clear of iTunes and the cloud, as for some, at least, i no longer have the originals from which they were made.   the last discussion i had with an Apple help person, who admitted being from an audio background, resulted in a suggestion that a "preference issue" was causing this.   I think the preferences are Apples, not mine, but this Wikipedia account is at variance with the facts, and needs upgrading.81.153.175.218 (talk) 20:02, 11 March 2017 (UTC)

Should this whole section be removed? All evidence I've seen shows that while OS X is happy to read 'sowt' AIFF files, there is no support for their creation. Thus the primary claims in the section are false and the remainder would seem irrelevant. (I've personally tested the AIFF export from iTunes and it does NOT create sowt files, it creates normal big-endian files).203.94.33.10 (talk) 20:43, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

This section should also be updated since Apple has re-branded the OS Pyll0 (talk) 14:19, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

browser audio html5 support

What browsers supported/support AIFF audio, and what is needed to have one support it today? I think that should be addressed. When was support added and when removed. פשוט pashute ♫ (talk) 15:01, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

Uncompressed audio is very large and it is generally best to compress it if you are going to put it on a web site. Safari does support AIFF, but not for streaming (the audio file must be fully downloaded first). Other browsers such as Chrome and Firefox do not support it. The audio formats supported by multiple browser vendors are listed in HTML5 Audio#Supported audio coding formats. -LiberatorG (talk) 04:13, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

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