Format

Audio Interchange File Format

Summary

Name: Audio Interchange File Format
Identifiers: PUID: fmt/414
Format type: Audio
Description: The Audio Interchange File Format (Audio IFF) provides a standard for storing sampled sounds. The format allows for the storage of monaural or multichannel sampled sounds at a variety of sample rates and sample widths. Audio IFF conforms to the " EA IFF 85" Standard for Interchange Format Files developed by Electronic Arts. Audio IFF is primarily an interchange format, although application designers should find it flexible enough to use as a data storage format as well. If an application does choose to use a different storage format, it should be able to convert to and from the format defined in this document. This will facilitate the sharing of sound data between applications. Audio IFF is the result of several meetings held with music developers over a period of ten months in 1987-88. Differences between AIFF versions are related to implementation within Apple operating systems and are not directly encoded within an AIFF file. As such it is not possible to distinguish between distinct AIFF versions through PRONOM identification.
File extensions: aif, aiff
Source: The National Archives and Records Administration / The National Archives and Records Administration

Has priority over

Note: Starts like most IFF files (FORM) followed by four bytes that tell how many more bytes follow in the file followed by AIFF.