WAV (or WAVE), short for Waveform auio format, is a Microsoft and IBM audio file format standard for storing an audio bitstream on PCs. It is a variant of the RIFF bitstream format method for storing data in “chunks”, and thus also close to the IFF and the AIFF format used on Amiga and Macintosh computers, respectively. It is the main format used on Windows systems for raw and typically uncompressed audio. The default bitstream encoding is the Microsoft Pulse Code Modulation (PCM) format.