WAVs and AIFFs are in general equally compatible with either Windows or Macintosh operating systems. It is thus similar to both the IFF and AIFF formats used on Amiga and Apple Macintosh computers respectively. WAV is a variant of the RIFF bitstream format method for storing data in 'chunks'. The usual bitstream encoding is the linear pulse-code modulation (LPCM) format. It is the main format used on Windows systems for raw and typically uncompressed audio. It is an application of the Resource Interchange File Format (RIFF) bitstream format method for storing data in 'chunks', and thus is also close to the 8SVX and the AIFF format used on Amiga and Macintosh computers, respectively. WAV stands for Waveform Audio File Format (WAVE, or more commonly known as WAV due to its file name extension), which is a Microsoft and IBM audio file format standard for storing an audio bitstream on PCs.
