AIFF ain't AIFF

[Leigh Hibbins]

In my post of 25 October 2009 (http://www.computeraudiophile.com/content/Lost-Album-Artwork-iTunes-9) I reported losing album art when upgrading to iTunes 9 in some, but curiously not all, of my Pro Tools LE generated 24bit/48kHz AIFF files – recordings made from vinyl using a Digidesign MBox series 1.

 

I have since been able to recover this lost album art by converting the affected files from AIFF to WAVE using Max 0.9.1 and then back again to AIFF. As the newly created AIFF files appear in the Finder the small icon beside their file name bears the artwork! This artwork is now stable in iTunes. It would appear the artwork was there all the time imbedded in the audio file but not available.

 

Also when importing the newly created AIFF files in to other iTunes libraries metadata is retained when previously with the affected files it was lost.

 

So if anyone out there is having trouble with metadata or album art in AIFF files I suggest conversion to WAVE and then back again to AIFF.

 

It would seem that AIFF ain't necessarily AIFF.