CAF to AAC Converter

CAF vs AAC — Which Should You Keep?

These two things are not the same kind of thing, which is why the choice confuses people. CAF is Apple's container — a wrapper that can hold almost any audio payload, including uncompressed PCM, Apple Lossless, or even AAC itself. AAC is the codec, the compressed bitstream that phones, browsers, car head units and consoles decode natively. Short answer: keep the CAF as your master if you are still editing in Logic Pro or GarageBand and need its markers and long-recording headroom; convert to AAC the moment the file has to leave the Apple ecosystem or ship at a sane size.

CAF and AAC Side by Side

When AAC Is the Right Target

• The file has to open on Windows, Android, a car stereo, a games console, or in a browser.
• You are shipping the recording to someone and a 10 MB-per-minute PCM master is absurd for the job.
• You want better quality per kilobit than MP3 gives you, and the destination is a modern device rather than a legacy one.
• You are feeding a video edit, a podcast host, or an app that expects an MPEG-family audio stream.

When to Keep the CAF Instead

• You are still editing: CAF can hold markers, regions and edit comments that no AAC stream carries.
• The recording is many hours long — that is exactly the case CAF's 64-bit offsets exist for.
• You need a bit-exact master. Convert to CAF to WAV or CAF to FLAC for a lossless copy, and treat AAC as the distribution format only.

How to Convert CAF to AAC

1. Upload Your CAF File: Drag and drop the .caf onto the page or click "+ Add Files" to browse. Several files can be queued and converted with the same settings in one pass.
2. Set the Bitrate under File Compression: Open the options. File Compression starts on Quality Preset, the hands-off mode — its dropdown displays "Highest" on load, but nothing is actually selected there, and it is the least predictable control on the page. Switch the mode to Constant Bitrate (the list runs from 8 kbps to 384 kbps and opens on 128 kbps), Custom Bitrate, or Variable Bitrate and one of its five AAC bands (96k-112k down to 20k-32k) for direct control.
3. Set Audio Channel, Audio Sample Rate or Trim (Optional): Leave Audio Channel and Audio Sample Rate on "Original" to mirror the source, drop to mono for speech, or use Trim with a start time and duration to export just one region.
4. Convert and Download: Click "Convert" and save the AAC. No sign-up, no watermark.

Bitrate Guide for AAC Output

Sizes below are straight arithmetic from the bitrate, so they hold for any recording of that length.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is AAC actually better than MP3 at the same bitrate?

For most material, yes — that was the design goal of the format. AAC's larger transform window, better stereo coding tools and finer quantization mean a 128 kbps AAC generally sounds closer to the source than a 128 kbps MP3, which is why Apple, YouTube and broadcast platforms standardized on it. The gap narrows as bitrates climb: at 256 kbps and above both formats are hard to distinguish from the source on typical playback gear. Choose CAF to MP3 instead only when the destination is genuinely old.

Will I lose quality converting CAF to AAC?

Some, always — AAC is a lossy codec by definition. What matters is how many lossy generations you have stacked. If the CAF holds uncompressed PCM or Apple Lossless, which is what a Logic or GarageBand bounce normally produces, this is a clean first-generation encode and at 192-256 kbps the difference is very hard to hear. If the CAF already wrapped a lossy payload, you are on generation two, so set the bitrate at or above the original's.

My CAF already contains AAC — can you just unwrap it instead of re-encoding?

No. The conversion always decodes the payload and re-encodes it, so a CAF that already held AAC is re-encoded rather than repackaged. That means a second lossy generation. If your goal is simply to get that same audio into a file mainstream players accept, CAF to M4A is usually the better target — the M4A container is what music apps expect and it carries tags.

Should the output be .aac or .m4a?

A raw .aac file is the bare bitstream: no tags, no artwork, no chapter marks. .m4a puts the identical AAC audio inside an MP4 container, which is what iTunes, Apple Music, most Android music apps and podcast tooling expect, and it can carry title, artist and cover art. Pick .aac when a tool asks specifically for an elementary AAC stream; pick M4A for anything you plan to keep in a library.

What bitrate should I use for a voice recording rather than music?

Speech occupies a narrow frequency range, so 96-128 kbps is generally ample and anything higher mostly adds bytes. Setting Audio Channel to mono roughly halves the result again on a single-source recording with no audible penalty. Save 192 kbps and above for music, layered audio, or anything with real high-frequency content.

Can the AAC keep the markers and annotations my CAF had?

No. Apple's format can carry markers, regions, edit comments, MIDI data, channel layout, peak and overview chunks and a UMID identifier — a raw AAC stream carries none of that. Keep the original CAF as your master if any of that metadata is load-bearing in your workflow, and treat the AAC purely as the delivery copy.

What happens to a high-resolution or multichannel CAF?

Our pipeline encodes AAC with the Fraunhofer FDK AAC encoder, which handles high sample rates and up to eight channels, so a 96 kHz or surround CAF does not get forced down to stereo the way some targets require. Bitrate is still worth setting deliberately on a source like that: pick a Constant Bitrate near the top of the dropdown — 256 kbps or above — so a wide-dynamic multichannel recording is not squeezed through a rate meant for speech.

How are my files handled after the conversion?

Your CAF is uploaded over an encrypted connection, converted on our servers, and deleted automatically a few hours later. There is no sign-up and no watermark, and files are never shared or made public. The realistic constraint on a multi-hour recording is upload time over your own connection rather than anything about the conversion itself.