WAV and AIFF explained
WAV stores uncompressed PCM audio — the raw samples, exactly as captured. A stereo CD-quality minute is roughly 10 MB, which is the price of having no compression whatsoever.
AIFF is Apple's uncompressed audio format, functionally equivalent to WAV but with better metadata support and big-endian byte order.
- Where WAV files come from
- Recording sessions, sample libraries and audio editing.
- Where AIFF is used
- Mac audio production and older Apple software.