I’m coming into this area as a practical and philosophical result of:
- me wanting to own my music
- CDs are barely being made
2.1. If they are - they’re not being shipped to my corner of the world - Torrenting often failed me in terms of variety.
However - I am absolutely ignorant about equipment, maintainance, and know-hows of the audiophile world.
In terms of gear, a good amp, and a good DAC (Digital Audio Converter) with a solid pair of headphones can turn your digital music into brand new songs.
Even my cheap DAC and headphone amp can output enough quality to hear the difference between FLAC and every other format (the realisation that music having ‘texture’ wasn’t just audiophiles being pretentious and was more like ‘being able to hear ALL the instruments’ ruined my bank account) :')