Audio Interchange File Format: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 12:09, 15 February 2022

Revision as of 05:23, 11 March 2022

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{{Original research|section|date=March 2009}}

With the development of the OS X operating system now known as [[macOS]] operating system, Apple created a new type of AIFF which is, in effect, an alternative [[little-endian]] byte order format.<ref>[https://developer.apple.com/mac/library/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man1/say.1.html Mac OS X Reference Library]</ref><ref>[https://developer.apple.com/iphone/library/documentation/musicaudio/Conceptual/CoreAudioOverview/SupportedAudioFormatsMacOSX/SupportedAudioFormatsMacOSX.html Supported Audio File and Data Formats in Mac OS X]</ref>

Because the AIFF architecture has no provision for alternative byte order, Apple used the existing AIFF-C compression architecture, and created a "pseudo-compressed" codec called '''sowt''' ('''twos''' spelled backwards). The only difference between a standard AIFF file and an AIFF-C/sowt file is the byte order; there is no compression involved at all.<ref name='RF04'>{{cite web | title=Technical Q&A QTMRF04: QuickTime Sound | url=https://developer.apple.com/mac/library/qa/qtmrf/qtmrf04.html | publisher=Apple | date=1995-05-01 | access-date=2009-11-09}}</ref>