For the music listening use case, if you can get your hands on a CD and rip it to FLAC that's the way to go.
When the CD format first took hold in the early/mid 80's, it was common for the record labels to push out CD's that were just straight digital transfers of the original analog mastering that was used to create the vinyl LP.
Now we're here 40 years later, and you can still find those CD's on Ebay and rip them using a program like foobar2000, and the result is basically flawless for all the common playback use cases (I'm not here to make the audiophile argument).
I'm also impressed that the 80's and 90's era CD's are not going bad on me. Boomers and Gen-X-ers will always have that box full of treasured CD's, and not a single one of them has failed on me so far.
When the CD format first took hold in the early/mid 80's, it was common for the record labels to push out CD's that were just straight digital transfers of the original analog mastering that was used to create the vinyl LP.
Now we're here 40 years later, and you can still find those CD's on Ebay and rip them using a program like foobar2000, and the result is basically flawless for all the common playback use cases (I'm not here to make the audiophile argument).
I'm also impressed that the 80's and 90's era CD's are not going bad on me. Boomers and Gen-X-ers will always have that box full of treasured CD's, and not a single one of them has failed on me so far.