Each audio sample is represented in the audio file by either 2 (for 16 bit) or 3 (for 24 bit) 8 bit "bytes" of data.-In SDII and AIFF files, the order of the bytes is from "most significant" to "least significant" i.e., the first byte represents the loud part of the sample, the last byte represents the quite part. -For WAV files the order is reversed. (The ordering property is called "endianess." SDII and AIFF files are in "Motorola" or "Big-Endian" order. WAV files are in "Intel" or "Little-Endian" order.)-The "strain" on the system occurs when you combine big and little endian formats in the same session: since signal processing code requires that all samples be in the same order, we have to choose one order and convert all the opposite order samples.