I still listen to my dad's classic rock records from the 60s and enjoy the hell out of it. But they sound like shit. ;-) If anyone someday down the line inherits your FLAC collection, they'll be listening to it out of nostalgia, not for the pristine audio quality.
You started with "I don't know why you'd..." and the answer is "because it's a waste of money" and "because you (mostly) can't hear a difference" and "because they work in my car".
As a side note, I have a phone that does take an SD card (in part because I like having my complete music collection there), but most people don't.
> I still listen to my dad's classic rock records from the 60s and enjoy the hell out of it. But they sound like shit. ;-)
You know why they sound like that? Because sound recording and copying technology was also shit. Garbage in, garbage out.
FLAC was made 50+ years after these records, and is basically indistinguishable from the real thing when made from something close to the original WAV masters, and played back on decent but affordable equipment. Until recently, this wasn't possible.
Not only that - with sufficient care, it will literally never degrade even by a single binary bit when it's being copied or stored, no matter how many times it's played or duplicated.
I have no problems listening to a FLAC now, or when I'm 90. I'm sure my descendants, if they care about my taste in music, wouldn't mind listening to the same files (possibly transcoded to another lossy format, or somehow improved by [REDACTED]) well into the 22nd century.
> If anyone someday down the line inherits your FLAC collection, they'll be listening to it out of nostalgia, not for the pristine audio quality
I beg to differ on that. The 30s jazz records that are so wonderful musically still sound like shit nowadays. That's a major deterrent to playing them.
> I have a phone that does take an SD card ... but most people don't.
I can't say about the numbers, but I didn't have much trouble finding a phone that took them in April 2021.
In general terms: over the last 50 years, it's never been a terrible move to waste CPU cycles or disk storage. Especially if it's a permanent choice.
You started with "I don't know why you'd..." and the answer is "because it's a waste of money" and "because you (mostly) can't hear a difference" and "because they work in my car".
As a side note, I have a phone that does take an SD card (in part because I like having my complete music collection there), but most people don't.