I use AIFF and WAV files interchangably. I run Pro Tools on a mac,
and also use Mtools, Peak, Final Cut, DVD Studio Pro, Kontakt,
Samplecell, Toast, Jam and iTunes on a regular basis. All deal
seamlessly with both AIFF and WAV.
Like it or not, the standard for audio files in professional systems
is shifting toward Broadcast Wav, a constrained subset of the
original Microsoft wav format. It supports predetermined and
extensible metadata, which is of great use in production
environments. For instance, the professional hard drive recorders
(slowly!) making their way to market will stamp files with timecode,
date, take and scene info which can be read later when synchronizing
to picture.
Ultimately this kind of standardization will be a good thing for all
of us - and there are no real compromises in using wav on mac, except
the *very* small performance hit involved in swapping the byte order
from the intel norm.
I'm still waiting for Roxio to release software called Butter ;)
-jeremiah
>Walter Knapp wrote:
>
>> iPod Audio formats supported
>> AAC (up to 320 Kbps), MP3 (up to 320 Kbps),
>> MP3 Variable Bit Rate (VBR), WAV, AIFF(Mac only), Audible
>
>Oops! So Mac users can play AIFF files on their iPods. That'll teach
>me to scroll down and read the whole page before forming a
>conclusion.
>
>It will be interesting to see if the AAC format, which is part of the
>MPEG4 specification and is incorporated into Quicktime, can make
>progress against the overwhelming popularity of MPEG1 level 3 (MP3)
>format. AAC encoding produces similar sound quality to MP3, but from
>a file that's as much as 25% smaller. Since it's often a challenge
>to squeeze a movie onto a single DVD disc, AAC's smaller file size is
>an important advantage.
>
>Apple reports more than a million downloads of the new iTunes for
>Windows in the four days since the software was made available.
>That's a lot of new customers. Apple reports selling 14 million songs
>since the start of their 99-cent-per-download service. Reportedly
>almost all of this money goes to the record companies, but it
>establishes Apple as the most successful of the music download
>sites.
>
>Regarding the reverse byte order of WAV versus AIFF, the root of this
>difference is that the Motorola processors in Macintosh computers put
>the most significant bytes in the lower memory locations (so-called
>big-endian byte order), while Intel processors in PCs are little-
>endian. This is of no practical consequence since all CD writing
>programs make the appropriate adjustments without any user
>intervention other than to specify you want an "audio CD."
>
>--oryoki
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jeremiah lyman moore | san francisco | sound+media |
http://babyjane.com/timeweb/
http://northstation.net/ organic, mechanized, organized sound
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