Convert Audio Interchange File Format (.aif) to Apple Lossless Audio Codec (.alac) online for free. Fast, secure audio conversion with no watermarks or registration.
Upload your .aif file by dragging it into the upload area or clicking to browse.
Choose your output settings. The default settings work great for most files.
Click Convert and download your .m4a file when it's ready.
AIF is Apple's uncompressed PCM audio format from 1988, storing audio in big-endian byte order within an IFF-based container. As the native high-fidelity format of classic Mac OS, AIF preserves every audio sample without any compression. ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec) is Apple's lossless compression codec, open-sourced in 2011, which achieves roughly 50% file size reduction while preserving bit-perfect audio quality.
Converting AIF to ALAC compresses uncompressed PCM into lossless ALAC within an M4A container. This is a purely beneficial operation — identical audio quality at half the storage space, with full native playback support across all Apple devices including iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV, and HomePod.
A CD-quality AIF file consumes approximately 10 MB per minute, while the same audio in ALAC occupies roughly 5-6 MB per minute — a 40-50% size reduction with zero quality loss. For a 60-minute album, that saves 240-300 MB of storage while keeping every sample perfectly intact. This is free space savings with no compromise.
ALAC also provides richer metadata support through its M4A container, including album art, lyrics, chapter markers, and iTunes-compatible tagging that AIF's simpler container cannot fully match. For anyone in the Apple ecosystem, ALAC is the strictly superior lossless format — smaller files, better metadata, and identical audio quality.
FFmpeg decodes the AIF container's big-endian PCM stream (pcm_s16be or pcm_s24be) to internal samples, then compresses using the ALAC encoder. ALAC uses adaptive linear prediction and entropy coding to achieve lossless compression — every sample reconstructs identically on playback. The output is wrapped in an M4A (MPEG-4 Part 14) container. Compression ratio varies by content: highly dynamic music compresses less (~55% of original), while speech or silence-heavy content compresses more (~35% of original).
Absolutely zero quality loss. ALAC is mathematically lossless — every PCM sample from the original AIF is perfectly preserved and can be decoded back to identical PCM data. A bit-for-bit comparison of the decoded ALAC output against the original AIF PCM stream will show zero differences. This is true regardless of bit depth (16-bit, 24-bit) or sample rate (44.1 kHz, 96 kHz, 192 kHz).
| Device | AIF | ALAC |
|---|---|---|
| Windows PC | Partial | Partial |
| macOS | Partial | Native |
| iPhone/iPad | Partial | Native |
| Android | Partial | Partial |
| Linux | Partial | Partial |
| Web Browser | No |
Resolution: N/A
Bitrate: 320 kbps
OGG Vorbis preferred
Resolution: N/A
Bitrate: 256 kbps
AAC format required
Resolution: N/A
Bitrate: 128 kbps
Lossless FLAC/WAV for best quality
Resolution: N/A
Bitrate: 128 kbps
MP3 mono for spoken word
AIF to ALAC is a strictly beneficial conversion — identical audio quality at roughly half the file size with better metadata support and universal Apple device compatibility.
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| No |
| الميزة | AIF | ALAC |
|---|---|---|
| الاسم الكامل | Audio Interchange File Format | Apple Lossless Audio Codec |
| الامتداد | .aif | .m4a |
| الأفضل لـ | Lossless quality | Lossless |