Convert MOD to AIFF — Free Online Converter

MOD files represent one of the earliest forms of digital music composition, created in 1987 for the Commodore Amiga's Ultimate Soundtracker. The format works on a fundamentally different principle than audio recordings: it stores short digitized instrument samples (8-bit, typically 4-22 kHz) along with pattern-based sequencing instructions that tell the playback engine which sample to play, at what pitch, with what effects, and on which of the 4 original channels. This architecture was the foundation of the tracker music scene and the demoscene — a subculture of programmers and musicians who created audiovisual productions called demos, pushing hardware to its limits.

AIFF (Audio Interchange File Format) was developed by Apple in 1988, just one year after MOD's creation, but serves an entirely different purpose. AIFF stores uncompressed PCM audio data in a big-endian format, making it the professional audio standard on Apple platforms and a staple in recording studios worldwide. Converting MOD to AIFF involves synthesizing the tracker's pattern data into a continuous audio stream, then storing that stream as lossless PCM — capturing a perfect rendering of the module with zero compression artifacts.

Audio producers working on Apple platforms often need lossless source material for their projects. When incorporating MOD tracker music into a Logic Pro session, a GarageBand arrangement, or a Final Cut Pro timeline, AIFF is the native format that integrates seamlessly without any transcoding overhead. The uncompressed PCM data ensures that no quality is lost between the rendering step and the editing environment.

Archivists and historians preserving the demoscene's musical heritage benefit from AIFF's lossless nature. While the original MOD files should always be preserved, having high-quality rendered AIFF versions provides a future-proof audio reference that doesn't depend on any particular MOD rendering engine. If rendering engines change or improve over time, having a lossless AIFF snapshot of a specific rendering preserves that exact interpretation for research and historical documentation.

FFmpeg's module decoder (libopenmpt or libmodplug) parses the MOD binary structure: the 20-byte song title, 31 instrument descriptors (sample name, length, finetune, volume, loop start, loop length), the 128-byte pattern order table, and the pattern data blocks. Each pattern contains 64 rows across 4 channels (or more in extended MODs), with each cell encoding a note period, instrument number, and effect command in 4 bytes. The renderer steps through rows at a rate determined by the default BPM (125) and speed (6 ticks per row), processing effects on every tick. The stereo PCM output (44100 Hz, 16-bit or higher) is written directly into an AIFF container using big-endian byte ordering with a FORM/AIFF chunk structure containing COMM (format) and SSND (sample data) chunks.