AIFF to MP3 converter

Apple’s uncompressed audio format, from 1988: plain PCM samples stored big-endian, in a file ending .aiff or .aif (both endings mean the same thing). GarageBand and Logic Pro offer it beside WAV when you export, and many sample libraries ship in it.

AIFF-C, ending .aifc, adds options: little-endian samples (known as sowt), 32-bit float and μ-law all convert here. The exception is Apple’s IMA4 compression, which only Safari can decode.

Nearly. Both hold uncompressed PCM, so they are the same size and sound identical: five minutes of 48 kHz stereo is 57.6 MB either way. What differs is byte order, big-endian in AIFF and little-endian in WAV, and the names of the chunks around the sound.

Email attachments, upload forms and sharing are where that size gets in the way, which is the usual reason to make an MP3. For an identical uncompressed copy that more apps expect, choose WAV in the converter instead.

Because the converter brings its own AIFF reader. Chrome’s audio decoders don’t read AIFF, so the page unpacks the samples itself, a slice at a time, in Chrome and Safari alike. That is why files up to 2 hours and 1 GB work in both.

The reader’s output matched ffmpeg’s decoding sample for sample on every test file, so the MP3 encoder sees exactly what the AIFF holds.

They convert just as 16-bit ones do. MP3 has no bit depth of its own, so the converter takes 24-bit and 32-bit float AIFFs without any preparation. A one-minute 24-bit stereo AIFF of 17.3 MB became a 2.4 MB MP3 at 320 kbps in 0.8 seconds.

Yes, once it is exported. NoteOwl imports the AIFF that GarageBand or Logic Pro writes, or the MP3 made here, and transcribes it on your Mac with on-device AI models. A podcast or interview comes back with every voice labelled and the words searchable.

Speaker recognition tells the voices apart, and export saves the transcript as Markdown, PDF or plain text.