Step 1: Supply your FLAC files using the button above or by haul and lay.
Step 2: Click the 'Convert' button to start the conversion.
Step 3: Get your converted AIFF files.
FLAC to AIFF Conversion FAQ
What does the FLAC to AIFF audio converter do?
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It re-encodes a FLAC audio file as AIFF. Sample rate and channel count are preserved; the difference is the codec and container.
Will the sample rate and channel layout be preserved?
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By default yes — stereo stays stereo, the original sample rate (44.1 kHz, 48 kHz, etc.) is carried through to the AIFF output.
Will the AIFF file be much larger than the source FLAC?
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Yes — lossless audio is typically 5-10x larger than lossy audio at perceptually equivalent quality. Plan for ~10 MB per minute for AIFF versus ~1 MB per minute for high-bitrate FLAC.
What output quality should I expect from FLAC to AIFF?
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Default settings target broadcast / web quality — visually identical to the source for most viewers. For archival use, pick the highest quality option in the converter settings.
Is FLAC to AIFF genuinely lossless?
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Yes. Both formats keep every sample, so decoding the AIFF returns a bit-identical copy of the audio inside the FLAC. Nothing is quantised, nothing is discarded, and the conversion can be repeated indefinitely without accumulating artefacts. What changes is the file size and which software will open it. FLAC uses linear prediction plus Rice coding to reach roughly 50-60% of the original size while decoding back to bit-identical PCM. AIFF stores uncompressed big-endian PCM — the Apple-side equivalent of WAV, with the same bit-for-bit fidelity.
What exactly is an AIFF file?
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A container with the audio inside it, rather than the audio on its own. That extra layer is where the length, the seek index and whatever metadata the format defines are kept, so a player knows how long an AIFF is before decoding a single frame instead of scanning the whole file to find out. It also means the extension does not always settle what is inside: several containers of this kind are allowed to hold more than one sort of audio, which is why two AIFF files can behave differently while looking identical from outside.
Most of my FLAC files came from CDs — does that matter here?
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Only in that the encode already happened once. A FLAC ripped from a disc was compressed at whatever bitrate the ripper was set to years ago, and that is the ceiling on everything downstream — converting cannot recover what the ripper discarded. If the discs are still on a shelf, re-ripping to a lossless format and encoding from that gives a genuinely better result than any conversion of the existing files. FLAC is the Free Lossless Audio Codec, an open format from 2001 that compresses without discarding a single sample.
Is FLAC free to use and distribute?
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Yes, without conditions worth worrying about. The specification is public, anyone can implement an encoder or decoder without asking or paying, and nobody can change those terms later — which is why it turns up in open-source tooling, in game engines and anywhere a licence negotiation would have killed the project. Converting away from it does not undo that; the files you already have stay exactly as usable as they were.
Is AIFF still a sensible thing to convert to?
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For a personal library, yes; for anything you are handing to somebody else, think twice. AIFF is being quietly succeeded rather than switched off — everything that plays it today will carry on playing it — but new encoders and new devices increasingly default to its replacement, which does the same job at least as well. If the file only has to open on your own machines, it is fine. If it has to open on a device bought in five years, pick the newer one. AIFF is as large as WAV with worse support outside the Apple world, so it is a poor choice for distribution.
Is there a file-size limit when converting FLAC to AIFF?
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Anonymous uploads are capped at a generous default; signed-in free accounts get a higher cap, and Pro accounts have no per-file limit. Browser memory is usually the practical constraint long before our server-side limits kick in.
Can I batch-convert several FLAC files to AIFF at once?
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Yes. Drop or pick multiple FLAC files in one upload — the converter processes them in parallel and returns a ZIP of the AIFF results. There is no need to repeat the upload step per file.
What happens to my FLAC files after the conversion?
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Uploaded files and AIFF outputs are auto-deleted after a short retention window. We do not inspect, share, or train on user files. Direct download links are time-limited and tied to your session.
