Flac Files 

Flac is an acronym that stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec. This is a codec used for audio compression that was authored, for the most part, by a man named Josh Coalson. Basically, it is an algorithm for lossless data compression. If you compress audio data with Flac, it can be decompressed into an exact copy of what it was before you compressed it. In other words, it does not lose audio quality during the compression/decompression phases.

Flac is open to anyone to use, and is royalty free. This has made the free software very popular with people who send a lot of music. It also supports things like cover art, tagging, and even fast seeking. While Flac is not as widely use and supported as the MP3 format, it is supported in a large number of hardware devices. In fact, it is even more supported than lossless formats like WavPack.

Development for Flac was started in the year 2000. Version 1 was released in 2001, and version 1.2.1 was released in 2007. Since Flac is specifically designed for the packing of audio data, it is different from algorithms like DEFLATE. In January of 2003 the Flac project was actually incorporated beneath the Xiph.org banner. This was the same company that had a part in other popular compression formats, including Speex, Vorbis, Theora, etc.

Audio compression is very important nowadays, especially since high definition audio takes up a lot of memory during transportation. Being able to compress audio is very advantageous, especially with so much audio being sent nowadays between people. There are several lossless audio formats, but Flac is definitely one of the more popular options (hence the popularity of flac converters) especially with it being royalty free and accessible by anyone for download.