Convert WAV to AIFF — Free Online Converter

WAV and AIFF are both uncompressed PCM audio containers that store identical audio data — the key difference is their container format and byte ordering. WAV uses Microsoft's RIFF structure with little-endian byte order, while AIFF (Audio Interchange File Format) uses Apple's IFF-derived structure with big-endian byte order. Both deliver bit-perfect audio reproduction with identical file sizes at the same specifications.

Converting WAV to AIFF is a container swap that preserves every audio sample exactly. This conversion is necessary when working in Apple-centric DAW environments (Logic Pro, GarageBand, Final Cut Pro) that historically prefer AIFF as the native uncompressed format, or when exchanging files with studios that standardize on AIFF for their macOS workflows.

Logic Pro and GarageBand have historically treated AIFF as their primary uncompressed format, with slightly smoother import behavior and better metadata integration compared to WAV on macOS. Professional studios running Apple hardware often standardize on AIFF to avoid any edge-case compatibility issues with Mac-specific features like Finder tagging and Spotlight indexing of audio metadata.

AIFF also supports richer metadata than WAV through its ID3 and AIFF-specific chunks — album art, lyrics, and detailed tagging work more reliably in AIFF within the Apple ecosystem. If you are preparing files for a Mac-based mastering engineer or submitting to a facility that requires AIFF, this conversion ensures seamless integration.

FFmpeg reads the RIFF/WAV header, extracts the raw PCM samples, swaps from little-endian to big-endian byte order, and writes them into an AIFF container with the appropriate COMM (Common), SSND (Sound Data), and optional MARK (Marker) chunks. Since both formats store identical PCM data, the conversion is essentially a byte-order swap and header rewrite — no audio processing occurs. The output file size is virtually identical to the input.