Hmm.. AIFF as a standard container is similar to WAV encoded with (L)PCM (in hifi /consumer circles this is the encoding we associate with WAV, but in industry it supports many more). With AIFF and default WAV the sample bit order is reversed, little endian and big endian. Some of the chunk types are different, with AIFF having a smaller defined set, and originally AIFF did not support meta data. AIFF-C adds many compressive and lossy data types as well as non compressive data types making it more similar to the capabilities of WAV.
However if the PCM is converted and therefore compressed into a non linear uLaw or aLaw encoding, supported in AIFF-C and WAV, from linear PCM (LPCM) there will be a loss of data, as effectively precision is reduced. For most of the world traditional telephony (TDM) and IP telephony have used μLaw and aLaw for decades and we are quite happy with it. Many including myself consider it the benchmark to measure more aggressive IP telephony compression types to.
BTW AIFF-C can store samples in the same order as WAV (little endian) , ie the reverse of AIFF
Simon
