Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

TyleRomeo

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Mar 22, 2002
888
0
New York
ok i know wav is PCs version of an uncompressed audio file. Is AIFF macs version of WAV?

Is there any difference between the two in sound quality or file size?

tyler
 
Yes, AIFF is the uncompressed version of your music. I don't really ever use wav files, so I can't tell you about quality, but AIFF files can become rather large very quickly. I have some four-minute songs at about 48MB. I record hour-long music recitals, and they are about 500-750 MB files.

Gus
 
>(TyleRomeo) ok i know wav is PCs version of an uncompressed audio file. Is AIFF macs version of WAV?

Both are fully uncompressed audio in "perfect pitch". The only difference is that .wav is the code easily recognizable to Windoze, probably because windoze has trouble reading .aiff files. The Mac can access both types of files and register them for perfect pitch.

>Is there any difference between the two in sound quality or file size?

Both are fully uncompressed audio. A four minute song can rack up about 40+MB of space, which is standard for perfect pitch. Perfect pitch encodes music at 1411Kbps, which means there are a lot more wavelengths in the audio frequency format, and each takes up space.

There is no difference in sound quality, just the code, but you can encode the file types back and forth to find out if there is a difference in sound quality. However, even with incredible hearing and modern earphone technology it should be impossible to distinguish the quality between the two file types.

Gus, I am just expanding on what you are saying, to make it sound more clear.
 
Originally posted by King Cobra
>(TyleRomeo) ok i know wav is PCs version of an uncompressed audio file. Is AIFF macs version of WAV?

Both are fully uncompressed audio in "perfect pitch". The only difference is that .wav is the code easily recognizable to Windoze, probably because windoze has trouble reading .aiff files. The Mac can access both types of files and register them for perfect pitch.

>Is there any difference between the two in sound quality or file size?

Both are fully uncompressed audio. A four minute song can rack up about 40+MB of space, which is standard for perfect pitch. Perfect pitch encodes music at 1411Kbps, which means there are a lot more wavelengths in the audio frequency format, and each takes up space.

There is no difference in sound quality, just the code, but you can encode the file types back and forth to find out if there is a difference in sound quality. However, even with incredible hearing and modern earphone technology it should be impossible to distinguish the quality between the two file types.

Gus, I am just expanding on what you are saying, to make it sound more clear.

thats exactly what i wanted to hear. thanks for your expert insight king cobra.

tyler
 
i'll get even more technical:;)

both AIFF and .wav are pulse-code modulated (PCM) uncompressed digital audio, they are basically the implementation of CD-Audio on the respective platforms. both support different bit depth and sampling rate (usually 16-bit, 44kHz as on compact disks). i could imagine that there is an issue with endianess(sp?), but apart from that, the formats are identical (i.e. you can't hear any differences).

noht
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.