Which is better aiff or flac

However, it should be noted that you cannot play this directly. The good thing about this conversion is that since both formats are lossless, there is no drop in quality.

If you are using an older IOS version, you cannot play it directly but will have to download some other applications from the Store to play this file.

Another advantage of FLAC is that you can play it in a wide variety of medium and media players. Many times, you cannot play the AIFF file on other devices or media that do not use Apple's operating system. Wav files and AIFF files have identical sampling rates and sizes. Therefore, their disk space is very similar. It is up to five times bigger than the regular MP3 file. This means that if you are listening to a podcast or a 10 minute long AIFF file, you will use around MB of space or even more than that.

It is a lossless audio format. However, unlike other lossless audio formats, there is no audio data compression which is responsible for the large size. If you have a CD collection and you are looking for a way to back up all your music, the FLAC file format offers you an excellent way of doing this.

It will give you all the songs that you want while taking up a relatively little amount of space. FLAC deals with compressing the audio file as much as it can without any loss of quality in the audio.

The AIFF file format, on the other hand, is not about compression. Instead, it is focused on rendering the music as accurately as possible. This doesn't make it better than FLAC though. It is a wonderful format. Therefore, it is smaller without losing any quality of audio performance. For one, since it is a smaller file, it is much quicker to download. Another advantage of this is that it gives you the ability to retain important information about music.

For example, this file format will retain stuff like the name of the musician, album, lyrics, and so on. AIFF, on the other hand, comes in a large format and isn't actually meant to be sent or downloaded as such. This format, as the name implies, is similar to the AIFF file format, but it compresses the audio file. The result is a smaller file size.

Therefore, you will find it easier to store and share it with others. As an audiophile, this is likely the part that you are most concerned with. Well, although FLAC does a good job of compressing the original music file and tries to stick as closely as possible to the original file format and audio quality, it still loses some of that vibrancy and quality.

It loses some quality as it passes through software. There are several reasons why this file format is so much better than most of the other audio file formats that you will find right now. On the other hand, AIFF is not like that. Here's a handy guide to all the file formats and the differences between them. If you want to know more, read on below for a more in-depth look at the differences in size, sound quality and compatibility.

Lossy and compressed, but sounds generally better. Used for Apple Music streaming. It is lossless and uncompressed so big file sizes , but not hugely popular. It comes in 2. FLAC hi-res : This lossless compression format supports hi-res sample rates, takes up about half the space of WAV, and stores metadata. It's royalty-free and is considered the preferred format for downloading and storing hi-res albums. MP3 not hi-res : Popular, lossy compressed format ensures small file size, but far from the best sound quality.

Convenient for storing music on smartphones and iPods. MQA hi-res : A lossless compression format that packages hi-res files for more efficient streaming. Used for Tidal Masters hi-res streaming. The file format used at kbps in Spotify streaming. Great sound quality but it's uncompressed, meaning huge file sizes especially for hi-res files. It has poor metadata support that is, album artwork, artist and song title information. Essentially, an uncompressed track is a reproduction of the original audio file, where real-world signals are transformed into digital audio.

WAV and AIFF are arguably the most popular uncompressed audio file formats, both based on PCM Pulse Code Modulation , which is widely recognised as the most straightforward audio storage mechanism in the digital domain. They can store CD-quality or high-resolution audio files. The drawback? These babies are big. A CD-quality bit, The difference is the size of the files.

Lossless files take up half the space of the originals. They all produce identical PCM streams. Catfish Stevens , Aug 14, Last edited: Aug 14, Cast Iron Shore , Instant Dharma , timind and 5 others like this.

AIFF files are huge by comparison. Stone Turntable , Aug 14, The datastream was exactly the same 2. Everything came back exactly the same, bit for bit. In short, there is absolutely no difference when playing back the two formats. Location: Frankfurt. Sound quality wise, there's no difference and you can freely convert between any of the formats.

Billy Infinity , shaboo and Grant like this. Location: Raleigh, N. Galenson , BruceS , SoundDoctor and 4 others like this. Location: Colorado Springs, CO. Synthfreek , Aug 14, Location: Louisville, Colorado. William Kucharski , Aug 15,