I didn't expect FLAC to be popular for as long as it has been. With just 30-40% savings over PCM, it reminds me of Stacker --which was popular in the days of 40MB hard drives, but abandoned when 100MB became cheap enough.<p>Maybe I'm old and grumpy. But for me, a RIFF-PCM .wav file is a format that can be parsed and completely understood by a smart high schooler in an afternoon. FLAC however... As an archive format it seems like a hugely complex system with a small payoff.