Dear python-dev,

I'm writing to provide some feedback on PEP-594, primarily the proposed deprecation and reason for the removal of the aifc and audioop libraries.

The post production film industry continues to make heavy use of AIFFs, as completely uncompressed audio is preferred. Support for the consumer alternatives (ALAC, FLAC) is virtually non-existent, with no movement towards adoption of those formats. Even Apple's own professional editing tool Final Cut Pro does not support ALAC. Many of the applications also support WAV, but not all.

Removal of this module from the standard library is complicated by the fact that a large number of film industry facilities have extremely limited internet access for security reasons. This does not make it impossible to get a library from pypi, but speaking to those devs has made me aware of what a painful process that is for them. They have benefited greatly from aifc's inclusion in the standard library.