18 May 2026 | 5 min read
Convert WAV to AIFF without losing metadata or quality
Same samples, different wrapper. Converting WAV to AIFF is lossless, but the metadata is where people quietly lose information.
WAV and AIFF both store uncompressed PCM. The difference is the container and the byte order: WAV is little endian and came from the PC world, AIFF is big endian and came from Apple. Converting between them rewrites the wrapper, not the audio, so nothing is lost at sample level.
Why anyone still needs AIFF
- Some music libraries and mastering houses still specify it.
- Legacy Mac based samplers and hardware expect it.
- Certain broadcast delivery specs list AIFF as an accepted alternative.
- It plays natively across the Apple ecosystem without a codec.
What survives the conversion
Sample rate, bit depth, channel count and every audio sample. What travels less reliably is metadata: Broadcast Wave timecode and iXML track names live in WAV specific chunks, and AIFF has different equivalents. If your workflow depends on timecode, keep the WAV as the master and treat the AIFF as a delivery copy.
Converting without an upload
Drop the WAV into the toolkit here, choose AIFF as the export format, pick the sample rate and bit depth you need, and download. The decode and re-encode happen in your browser through the Web Audio API, so the file never leaves your machine. That matters when the material is under embargo or covered by an NDA.
Before you convert, check the source
Run the file through the inspector first. If it turns out to be a six channel poly rather than the stereo pair you expected, you will want to split or downmix before wrapping it as AIFF.