Well, it does need to know to support ogg, if for no other reason than to make sure to load the files right. By default, it's set up so that recognized music files get put on the Karma as tunes, and any other files get just put on as Taxi files. So, at the very basic level, it needs to know that ogg files go in as music.

Beyond that, I'm sure there are different things to put in the database for a vorbis or flac file than the other music files, so it would need to know how to write the database parts correctly. Also, for the AudioMorph feature, if you want to transcode on the way in it would certainly need to know how to read and write the formats.

So, when it didn't specifically support vorbis or flac, you couldn't use it to get vorbis or flac files on to Karma.

As far as getting stuff off the Karma, yeah, it wouldn't need to really know anything since all it's doing is pulling off data and handing it to an external player.