Why don't all digital players support AIFF files?

If anyone knows the answer to this, please share it.

I've shopped for a number of digital media players and most of them don't support AIFF, even though AIFF seems to be the default on Macs.

Is there any explanation? Does Apple charge people to use AIFF?

 

WAV is the standard in the Windows world.

 

Which ones don't? All the ones I've used do, or have plugins available.

 

No. I have AIFF files on my iPod. What are you shopping for?

 

I was looking for a stand alone player to replace my Squeezebox Touch. Cambridge Audio's Stream Magic 6 claims to but doesn't; the display shows it's playing but it only outputs white noise, and I never got satisfaction from their customer support. The Marantz Players don't. The new Krell Connect doesn't. I finally bought the Bryston BDP-1 which does. I asked Bryston, and they don't understand why more manufacturers don't.

In fact, a reviewer in a recent issue of either Absolute Sound or Stereophile mentioned this in a review of a player that doesn't play AIFF files.

 

Why not use Apple Lossless?

 

Why? Storage is cheap.

 

I'm actually surprised at this, as well -- it's not like it needs to be licensed, similar to WAV. It's more likely the vendor in question is assuming that there's no real reason to add it into their firmware.

EDIT: Spec sheet for that Cambridge Audio device: http://www.cambridgeaudio.com/media/stream-magic-6-tech-spec-1360237999.pdf. If you have it and it's not working, I'd call them. Could it be a sample rate limitation or perhaps some proprietary tagging? EDIT2: you called them already, sorry. I'd check firmware, then try a non-tagged 16/44.1k AIFF as a starting point to see if that works.

 

The answer is incredibly simple: because it isn't very popular. Adding support for AIFF is probably very easy in software but probably not worth the time for most device firmware creators.

Back in the day the standard files supported by a DAP were WAV, MP3 and WMA. Now AAC has overtaken WMA, largely due to iTunes, and of course higher-end devices support things like ALAC, FLAC, OGG, etc.

 

I already have tons of files that are AIFF and I don't want to spend the time converting them all when manufacturers have the ability to make devices that will read the AIFF format. It's not like AIFF is the same as the SACD format. It's much more commonly used.

Suppose one day manufacturers decide to dump MP3 or MP4 for another format? What would you do?

I'm just curious about why they choose to leave that format out. From what I understand, the difference between WAV and AIFF is one has metadata at the beginning and the other has metadata at the end of the coding.

 

I've been in contact with them for months during which I sampled two different machines. They've sent my question to "Engineering" and they've asked for and received a sample of one of my AIFF files, but after receiving no answer after that, I just returned my unit and bought the Bryston. I'm happy because it supports AIFF and sounds great(although it cost more than the Cambridge).

 

Did the sample AIFF have metadata? I don't think the standard supports it - it's one of those things where it may or may not work depending on the app, or so I've read. I know WAV doesn't support metadata even though some programs (like JRiver) add proprietary tags.

The concerns over long-term support is a valid one - I really don't want to have to re-transcode all my FLAC files one day. But AIFF / WAV are over 25 years old now, I believe, and the lack of standard tagging was the main reason I avoided it when I decided on a standard lossless / uncompressed archival solution. Hopefully FLAC will still be supported in my golden years -- else I'm going to have to take a month or two out of my life to re-transcode one day.

 

WAV does support metadata. It's just that the way it stores metadata isn't consistently recognized across different players, softwares, programs.

 

But that's the problem -- if you tag WAV files you are veering from the standard format. So one program / device might recognize it, and another might either ignore the metadata or may fail to play back the file entirely. I'm reasonably sure AIFF is the same way.

 

Thurenity,
What do you mean by tagging files?

 

Adding metadata - ie album art / album name / artist name etc. Although you can technically add them (again I'll use JRiver as an example here as I know it can add tags to WAV/AIFF) that doesn't mean that other devices will support it. Another device could support those same tags, ignore the tags, or it could flat-out fail to play back the file.

 

So, even renaming the file is adding a tag, or at least changing it?

 

Renaming the actual file? No, that's different and shouldn't affect anything. I mean the metadata that gets embedded into the file via apps like jRiver. Audacity, I think, does basic tagging as well.

EDIT: Here's the Audacity wiki: http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/WAV#Metadata

 

The only .wav file type which reliably supports metadata is .bwf (broadcast wave file).

 

wav & aiff are really the same. Try changing the .aif extension of the file to .wav and voila it will play on a player that won't recognize aiff

 

Meh, you could just set Foobar to transcode your entire library using all of your CPU cores before going to sleep and it'd probably be done by the time you wake up.

 

My library is AIFF. I am not aware of any issues with storing metadata in AIFF. I see no issues whether I use iTunes, XLD, or JRiver when adding or editing metadata. It has not changed across the use of an iMac and a Mac Mini. I have no problems when having transferred my files from internal HDD to external WD HDD or to Lacie HDD. I have had no issues whether I use iTunes, Pure Music, Audivrana or JRiver as playback software. The only thing I have ever "loss" is play counts and ratings when originally importing my files to JRiver (the same files as used in iTunes) but that is not based on file type.

 

Aiff vs. Wave is not a question of Mac vs. Windows, but Motorola vs. Intel.

Aiff is optimised for Motorola processors used by Amiga and legacy Macs.
Wave is optimised for Intel processors.

Only difference is whether the bits are read from left-to-right or right-to-left.

Now that Apple use Intel processors (and modern processors are very fast) aiff is redundant.

 

How is AIFF redundant? I am unable to find any information that it was "optimized" for Amiga processors only that it was based on IFF which was created for Amiga. Have fun with WAV if you need any portability (and I don't mean portable devices) and you hope to keep more than rudimentary metadata intact.

 

It's a little more work than that, but it's not like it would be impossible - sure, the transcode itself is fairly easy if you script it. But one would still want to check and make sure there were no issues so you'd have to at least spot check it + re-replicate it to all your backup devices / media devices. It would take a little time.

I'm not all that worried though as I think FLAC is there for the long-haul.

Foobar2000 doesn't support AIFF tags - I noticed this when I setup my AAC transcode process (I go from FLAC > AIFF so that way I can use Apple's MFIT process). When what I can gather, AIFF tagging has a bit more support than WAV but it's still a hit and miss affair.

I went to FLAC years ago so no worries on my end.