That you think you might later re-encode is absolutely an argument for lossless formats. I'm not arguing that there's no use for lossless formats. The comment

That you think you might later re-encode is absolutely an argument for lossless formats. I'm not arguing that there's no use for lossless formats. The comments I was originally replying to was questioning why they're not universal. The reason they're not universal is because you need a special reason for them to make any sense. > This seems rude. I meant it tautologically: literally the definition of useless is a difference which has no measurable impact.