3GP to AIFF Converter

3GP to AIFF — Extract Mobile Audio to Uncompressed PCM

A 3GP file is a 3G-era mobile video clip; this tool pulls the audio track out and saves it as AIFF, discarding the picture. The honest catch: AIFF is uncompressed PCM, but it can't add fidelity the phone never captured — if your 3GP holds AMR-NB speech (8 kHz, telephone-bandwidth), the AIFF will be a big file that still sounds like a phone call. Convert to AIFF when you need raw PCM your Mac DAW reads natively; for a small shareable file, use 3GP to MP3 instead.

3GP vs AIFF — Side-by-side Comparison

When to Pick AIFF

• You need uncompressed PCM that Logic Pro, GarageBand, or Pro Tools load natively without a decode pass.
• You're handing a voice memo or mobile clip's audio to a Mac-based editor that wants raw samples for cleanup, denoising, or transcription prep.
• You want a stable archival master of a clip's soundtrack with no further generation loss after editing.
• Your 3GP actually holds AAC music audio and you want it in an uncompressed container for a macOS mastering or sample-library workflow.

When AIFF Won't Help (Read This First)

• The source is AMR-NB speech. AMR-NB is a narrowband speech codec — 8 kHz sampling, filtered to 200–3400 Hz, mono, 4.75–12.2 kbit/s, adopted by 3GPP in 1999 for GSM/3G calls. Converting it to AIFF gives you a ~10 MB/min PCM file that still sounds like a phone call. AIFF cannot reconstruct frequencies the codec discarded.
• The audio is already lossy AAC. AAC inside a 3GP is compressed; AIFF stores its decoded samples uncompressed, so you get a much larger file with no quality regain — same audible quality, 5–80x the bytes.
• You want a small, shareable file. AIFF is the opposite of small. For that, use 3GP to MP3.

How to Convert 3GP to AIFF

1. Upload Your 3GP File: Drag and drop or click "+ Add Files" to add your .3gp or .3g2 clip — a phone recording, voice memo, or old MMS video. Batch is supported.
2. Set Audio Channel and Audio Sample Rate: Both default to Original (match the source track). For AMR-NB speech, leaving Audio Sample Rate at Original (8000 Hz) keeps the file smallest — upsampling to 44100 Hz only inflates size without adding detail. Set Audio Channel to Mono for voice, Stereo only if the source is genuinely stereo.
3. Trim (Optional): Switch Trim from Unchanged, then enter Start time and Duration in seconds or HH:MM:SS.sss to pull just the segment you need.
4. Convert and Download: Click Convert. The output is PCM 16-bit big-endian AIFF. No sign-up, no watermark.

Frequently Asked Questions

Will converting my 3GP to AIFF make the audio sound better?

No. AIFF is an uncompressed container, not a quality upscaler. If the 3GP's audio is AMR-NB, it was captured at 8 kHz and filtered to 200–3400 Hz (telephone bandwidth); the AIFF holds those same band-limited samples as PCM, so it still sounds like a phone recording — just in a 10 MB/min file. If the 3GP holds AAC, the AIFF carries the AAC-decoded samples with no audible improvement. AIFF's value is workflow (native PCM in your DAW, no re-decode), not fidelity.

My 3GP has AMR-NB audio — what sample rate should I choose?

Leave Audio Sample Rate at Original. AMR-NB is recorded at 8000 Hz, so 8 kHz mono AIFF preserves everything that was captured at roughly 0.9 MB/min. Upsampling to 44100 Hz produces a file ~5x larger that contains no extra audio information — the missing high frequencies are gone from the source and resampling cannot invent them.

Why is my AIFF so much larger than the original 3GP?

Because 3GP stored audio compressed (AMR-NB often near 12 kbit/s, AAC around 64–128 kbit/s) and AIFF stores it uncompressed. A one-minute clip that was a few hundred KB as 3GP becomes several megabytes as AIFF (about 10 MB/min for 44.1 kHz 16-bit stereo, ~0.9 MB/min for 8 kHz mono). The video you discarded is gone, but the audio payload expands. To keep it small, keep the source sample rate, use Mono for voice, and Trim to just the part you need.

What audio codec does this output, and can I change the bit depth?

The output is PCM 16-bit big-endian (PCM_S16BE) — the standard AIFF encoding Logic Pro, GarageBand, and Pro Tools assume. There is no upside to 24-bit here: a 3GP's audio is lossy and often 8 kHz, so 16-bit already exceeds the source's effective resolution. If you specifically need a different PCM width for a tooling reason, convert to 3GP to WAV, which exposes more PCM bit-depth options.

What's the difference between AIFF and AIF?

None — .aiff and .aif are the same Audio Interchange File Format, just a 4-character versus 3-character extension, and they play identically in every DAW. For the reverse direction or to rename the extension, see AIFF to AIF.

How long do you keep my uploaded file?

Your file is uploaded over an encrypted connection, processed on our servers, and deleted automatically a few hours after conversion — there's no account, no watermark, and the audio is never shared or made public. In our testing, a 30-second AMR-NB voice clip (8 kHz mono) produced an AIFF of about 0.5 MB, while the same length of stereo AAC music at 44.1 kHz produced roughly 5 MB.

Can I cut out just one part of a long 3GP recording?

Yes — set Trim to enabled and enter Start time and Duration. Only that segment is written to the AIFF, which saves output size and processing time. For multi-region edits or fades after extraction, run the result through Audio Cutter.