afconvert: Difference between AAC formats: 'aac ' 'aace' 'aacf' 'aach' 'aacl' 'aacp' 'alac' 'paac' When using afconvert for AAC output, I find little documentation on the format variants under the m4af category:

'aac', 'aace', 'aacf', 'aach', 'aacl', 'aacp', 'alac', 'paac'.

I can guess probably 'aac' is the basis, 'alac' is the lossless format, 'aach' is the HE-AAC. What about the rest? The differences?

Same for other variants under other format tags.
The "names" stem from the four char values defined in the Software Development Kit for CoreAudio. Specifically, they are from the header CoreAudioTypes.h. You can find the documentation here.

enum {
kAudioFormatLinearPCM               = 'lpcm',
kAudioFormatAC3                     = 'ac-3',
kAudioFormat60958AC3                = 'cac3',
kAudioFormatAppleIMA4               = 'ima4',
kAudioFormatMPEG4AAC                = 'aac ',
kAudioFormatMPEG4CELP               = 'celp',
kAudioFormatMPEG4HVXC               = 'hvxc',
kAudioFormatMPEG4TwinVQ             = 'twvq',
kAudioFormatMACE3                   = 'MAC3',
kAudioFormatMACE6                   = 'MAC6',
kAudioFormatULaw                    = 'ulaw',
kAudioFormatALaw                    = 'alaw',
kAudioFormatQDesign                 = 'QDMC',
kAudioFormatQDesign2                = 'QDM2',
kAudioFormatQUALCOMM                = 'Qclp',
kAudioFormatMPEGLayer1              = '.mp1',
kAudioFormatMPEGLayer2              = '.mp2',
kAudioFormatMPEGLayer3              = '.mp3',
kAudioFormatTimeCode                = 'time',
kAudioFormatMIDIStream              = 'midi',
kAudioFormatParameterValueStream    = 'apvs',
kAudioFormatAppleLossless           = 'alac'
kAudioFormatMPEG4AAC_HE             = 'aach',
kAudioFormatMPEG4AAC_LD             = 'aacl',
kAudioFormatMPEG4AAC_ELD            = 'aace',
kAudioFormatMPEG4AAC_ELD_SBR        = 'aacf',
kAudioFormatMPEG4AAC_HE_V2          = 'aacp',
kAudioFormatMPEG4AAC_Spatial        = 'aacs',
kAudioFormatAMR                     = 'samr',
kAudioFormatAudible                 = 'AUDB',
kAudioFormatiLBC                    = 'ilbc',
kAudioFormatDVIIntelIMA             = 0x6D730011,
kAudioFormatMicrosoftGSM            = 0x6D730031,
kAudioFormatAES3                    = 'aes3'
};