Convert OGG to CAF — Free Online Tool
Convert OGG audio files (Vorbis, Opus, or FLAC streams) to Apple's Core Audio Format (CAF) with uncompressed PCM audio, making them compatible with macOS and iOS development workflows, Core Audio APIs, and professional Apple audio toolchains. The conversion transcodes your OGG-compressed audio to 16-bit PCM — a lossless, uncompressed representation ideal for low-latency playback and audio processing on Apple platforms.
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FFmpeg Command
Copy this command to run the same conversion locally with FFmpeg on your desktop. Download FFmpeg
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Note: Browser-based encoding uses approximate quality targets. For precise CRF compression, copy the FFmpeg command above and run it on your desktop.
Estimated output:
Conversion Complete!
DownloadHow It Works
OGG is a container that typically holds lossy-compressed audio streams — most commonly Vorbis or Opus — which use perceptual encoding to discard audio data the human ear is less sensitive to. CAF, by contrast, defaults to uncompressed PCM audio (pcm_s16le: signed 16-bit little-endian samples). During this conversion, FFmpeg decodes the compressed OGG audio stream back to raw PCM samples, then writes those samples into a CAF container without any further compression. This means the output will be significantly larger than the input, but the audio is fully decompressed and ready for direct use by Core Audio, AVFoundation, or Xcode asset pipelines without any additional decoding step. Note that because the OGG source was originally lossy-compressed, the final PCM output represents the best-possible reconstruction of the original — not a lossless copy of the pre-compression master.
What Each Flag Does
| Flag | What it does |
|---|---|
ffmpeg
|
Invokes the FFmpeg binary — the underlying engine that powers this browser-based tool via WebAssembly. The same command runs identically on macOS, Linux, or Windows desktop FFmpeg installations. |
-i input.ogg
|
Specifies the input OGG container file. FFmpeg will detect whether the stream inside is Vorbis, Opus, or FLAC and handle decoding accordingly before writing to CAF. |
-c:a pcm_s16le
|
Transcodes the compressed OGG audio stream (Vorbis/Opus/FLAC) to signed 16-bit little-endian PCM — the uncompressed, decode-ready format that Apple's Core Audio APIs natively consume without additional decompression overhead. |
-b:a 128k
|
Sets a target audio bitrate of 128 kbps. This flag is effectively a no-op for pcm_s16le output since uncompressed PCM has a fixed, mathematically determined bitrate — it only becomes relevant if you swap the codec to a compressed format like AAC or Opus. |
output.caf
|
Defines the output filename with the .caf extension, which tells FFmpeg to wrap the audio in Apple's Core Audio Format container — the only audio container with deep native support across all of Apple's operating systems and developer frameworks. |
Common Use Cases
- Preparing game audio assets originally authored in OGG/Vorbis for use in an iOS or macOS game built with Apple's AVAudioEngine, which has native CAF support
- Converting open-source sound effect libraries distributed in OGG format into CAF for use in Xcode projects without requiring additional codec dependencies
- Bringing OGG podcast or voiceover recordings into a macOS audio editing environment like Logic Pro or Core Audio-based tools that prefer CAF as a working format
- Uncompressing OGG-encoded audio into PCM CAF files for low-latency audio playback in real-time applications where decoding overhead must be eliminated
- Migrating a cross-platform audio library — where OGG was chosen for browser/Linux compatibility — to Apple-native CAF assets for a macOS/iOS release build
- Converting OGG music tracks from open game projects (e.g., those shipped with Creative Commons audio) into CAF for use in SpriteKit or SceneKit scene assets
Frequently Asked Questions
No — and it's important to understand why. The OGG container almost certainly holds a lossy-compressed stream (Vorbis or Opus), meaning audio data was already discarded during the original encoding. Converting to uncompressed PCM CAF faithfully represents what survives after that lossy compression, but it cannot recover what was lost. The output will sound identical to the OGG source, just stored uncompressed. If your OGG contained a FLAC stream, however, the conversion is fully lossless end-to-end.
OGG/Vorbis and OGG/Opus use aggressive perceptual compression — a 128 kbps Vorbis file might be 10–15x smaller than the equivalent uncompressed audio. CAF with pcm_s16le stores raw audio samples with no compression: a stereo, 44.1 kHz file uses about 10 MB per minute. This size increase is expected and is the price of the uncompressed, decode-free format that Core Audio workflows often require.
No. CAF does not support chapter markers or multiple simultaneous audio tracks — it is a single-stream audio container. If your OGG file contains chapter metadata or multiple audio streams, these will not be carried over to the CAF output. If chapter support is important, consider an intermediate format like M4A or MKV audio. Only the primary audio stream will be written to the CAF file.
CAF has broad native support across the entire Apple ecosystem. macOS, iOS, iPadOS, tvOS, and watchOS all support CAF playback and processing through Core Audio, AVFoundation, and AVAudioEngine. Xcode accepts CAF files directly in asset catalogs. QuickTime Player, Logic Pro, and GarageBand on macOS can open and export CAF. It is particularly well-suited for iOS game development because it avoids the file size limits that affect WAV and AIFF.
Replace '-c:a pcm_s16le' with '-c:a aac' and adjust '-b:a' to your target bitrate (e.g., '-b:a 192k'). The full command would be: ffmpeg -i input.ogg -c:a aac -b:a 192k output.caf. CAF supports several codecs including AAC, FLAC, Opus, Vorbis, and various PCM formats. Using AAC keeps file sizes small while maintaining Apple compatibility, whereas FLAC (-c:a flac) gives you lossless compression with a much smaller file than PCM.
Yes. On macOS or Linux, you can loop over files in a directory with: for f in *.ogg; do ffmpeg -i "$f" -c:a pcm_s16le -b:a 128k "${f%.ogg}.caf"; done. On Windows (PowerShell), use: Get-ChildItem *.ogg | ForEach-Object { ffmpeg -i $_.FullName -c:a pcm_s16le -b:a 128k ($_.BaseName + '.caf') }. The in-browser tool handles one file at a time, so the FFmpeg command shown on this page is particularly valuable for batch processing large collections locally.
Technical Notes
The default output codec, pcm_s16le, means signed 16-bit integer PCM samples stored in little-endian byte order — the standard CD-quality representation. If your source OGG contained high-dynamic-range audio (e.g., a FLAC stream at 24-bit depth), you may want to substitute pcm_s24le in the command to preserve that extra resolution, since downconverting to 16-bit will apply dithering and reduce dynamic range. The '-b:a 128k' flag has no effect on PCM output because uncompressed audio has a fixed bitrate determined by sample rate, bit depth, and channel count — it is only meaningful if you switch to a compressed codec like AAC. OGG metadata tags (artist, title, album, tracknumber) are not guaranteed to survive this conversion since CAF has a different metadata model; critical tags should be verified and re-applied using a tool like afinfo or FFmpeg's '-metadata' flags post-conversion. CAF's primary advantage over WAV or AIFF in Apple environments is its support for files exceeding 4 GB and its native integration with Core Audio's AudioFile API, making it the recommended container for large uncompressed audio assets in macOS and iOS applications.