I'd argue (I think many would) that FLAC is substantially less complicated than MP3. Perceptual compression, the frequency domain, and things like the FFT are m

I'd argue (I think many would) that FLAC is substantially less complicated than MP3. Perceptual compression, the frequency domain, and things like the FFT are more complicated in implementation and in the math than Run-Length, residual / delta encoding, linear predictive coding. And perceptual compression schemes use both "classes" of compression tools anyway (broadly speaking).