It's kinda pointless to play Don Quixote against the formats that the music industry insists on peddling. *shrug*

I'm also in my 40's and a former music industry exec with a lot of time in the studios (on the recording end). I used to think I could tell the difference between a CD and a 320kbit mp3. Then someone challenged me to an blind A/B session and guess what....I couldn't. As far as FLAC goes, you definitely can't tell any difference because it's the same (lossless) bitstream that you'd get from the source. I purchase all my music on CD/DVD/BluRay and then rip it. I don't buy compressed music of any type unless it's something I don't want to waste money buying a whole disc for...we've all got those one hit wonders we like, after all. After it's ripped, the original goes in a box and likely never gets seen again unless I decide I want to look at the vanishingly small liner notes. I do that for convenience and to prevent the original coasters from being scratched by the kids (or adults after a few too many). You can't beat the convenience. Scroll through your list of titles, search based on whatever criteria you want, set it up to randomly play, etc....all on your TV screen. If you have a party, nobody needs to go anywhere near your expensive gear and can flip through your content at a safe distance without so much as a peep from me on how to navigate around. It's THAT easy.