Forgot I was part of a discussion, my apologies. It is true that SSDs have led to a decrease in available memory generally, but I still use magnetic drives for most of my storage since they're still huge. SSDs should primarily be used on your operating system and any applications you may run frequently, but I'm just spewing common knowledge here.
I don't follow the logic behind the DOSBox being an emulator of older systems and therefore should only support older formats. In that case it shouldn't have had support for image scalers and other non-DOS features like image mounting. I wasn't arguing for the removal of .ogg support, so those older systems that are being emulated have no reason to fear removal.
My idea of futureproofing was solely for my own collection, it would be nice to leave my sons with a giant DOS archive with as much high quality material as I possibly can (such as high quality manual/box art scans, high quality OST folders (even GOG have started offering some flac OSTs with their game purchase here and there), accurate ISO rips. I wouldn't want to leave my kids lossy formats, they might one day start using 8 bit music samples if they ever become musicians and having a lossy format to sample and transcode from would just be in poor taste. I wouldn't want to impose FLAC as the default standard for every person's collection, but only for myself where I can control the ripping process and then proceed to use those FLAC files to set-up a personal, sharable, working out-of-the-box DOSBox environment that has the highest quality files I can attain and makes use of said files during emulation. I am sure most people are just fine using lossy formats, but the perfectionist in me just won't have it.
There are even differences between ogg 320 and mp3 320. In particular speaking of one of the sites I frequent, they have banned any form of .ogg, only allowing the following lossy formats: MP3, AAC, AC3, DTS, for audio uploads. Their reasoning was that .ogg was archaic and hasn't kept up with recent trends and upgrades to other lossy formats, particularly mp3 and the rise of AAC to popularity due to the itunes store, where AAC is the default for lossy and ALAC(apple lossless) for lossless, and apple's equipment, which takes any lossy format and transcodes it into AAC when you upload tracks to your iphone, loses more quality in the process.
Really the primary reason for supporting FLAC isn't for people like me that have "been blessed with better hearing" (which honestly I believe has just as much to do with training your hearing to spot the differences) as some would say in these neverending debates but because they would be attractive for collecting soundtracks (particularly from games that made use of mt-32 and other such hardware) and using those soundtracks (particularly from games that made use of mt-32 and other such hardware) in DOSBox would just be a huge benefit that would encourage more people to build their own lossless collections, even if niche. We live in an age where we have the capacity to preserve our digital history but the drive to do so by most people just isn't there, which is a giant shame. This is why I have so much respect for people who create emulators since it allows us to preserve old hardware and software and show our children what it was like in the old days, where it all came from, enabling them to taste such a richness for themselves.
FLAC also adds awesome metadata support not present anywhere else (Vorbis tags, pretty much unlimited possibilities), checksums, ReplayGain etc. In terms of relevancy to video gaming and the experience derived, when you are listening to FLAC you are actually listening to the source file just as it was, bit by bit, only very efficiently compressed. The PCM data being sent to your DAC is identical to what was on the original CD.
Finally, at the moment I don't have the luxury of decent audio equipment, as my main PC only has an onboard Realtek high-def audio soundcard and some middlerange microlab 5.1 speakers, but even with just these, I can swear I can hear a difference between FLAC and constant 320, even if I recognize that in some cases it might be just being a snob and/or delusional, and ofc the source material is important. I do plan on getting some higher grade audio equipment in the future.