I am trying to decide what the best format is to convert all my Apple Garage Band and Soundtrack Pro .caf files to because Premiere Pro does not support .caf files. The obvious answer would be a lossless format like .wav of .aiff, but after converting a few I've noticed a huge increase in file size, so this leads me to believe that these .caf files are already a compressed and lossy format. Considering the average conversion produced a file that was almost 10 times as large as the source is seemed like a huge a waste of space.
After researching it seems .caf is a container that can house any variety of audio formats, but the ones I've encountered so far appear to be AAC which itself isn't a super compatible format.
So what would you suggest I convert to? I want it to be compatible across as many softwares as possible (Premiere, Audition, After Affects, Motion, etc...) while not ruining the quality of the audio.
Thanks for any suggestions!