In 1988, Apple Computers published "AIFF (Audio Interchange File Format): A Standard For Sampled Sound Files" - a document detailing a sound file format developed by Apple for storing digital audio. The format stores both monaural and multi-channel sampled sounds, at a variety of sample rates and bandwidths.

Audio IFF was originally developed as an interchange format; i.e. to encode data into a specific language, but it was also used as a storage format for audio data. It was recommended in the document that should audio application designers choose to use a different storage format, that the chosen format should be able to convert to and from the AIFF format developed by Apple. This allowed easier sharing of data between various audio applications for the Macintosh .[5]

AIFF was intended for use with a wide range of computers, sampled sound instruments, sound software applications and hi-fi recording devices. The format has become one of the most common audio files for the Mac, and is recognised by most, if not all, sound editing and hard disk recording software such as ProTools and Sound Designer.

The WaveForm Audio File Format, also known as RIFF WAVE format, is a Microsoft Windows 3.1 sound standard. As with AIFF, WAVE files are sound data files - digital representations of analogue sounds, but are compatible with IBM PCs rather than Apple Macintosh, and are recognised by their .wav extension. Also similar to the AIFF format, is WAVE's compatibility with various software for the PC, from sound editors and hard disk recorders, to games and even sounds within word-processed presentation documents.

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