i completely get preferring analog media, so if it’s about the sound characteristics (that ‘warmth’), having physical media, etc fair enough. but if the goal of an audiophile is to get the highest quality reproduction of a recording wouldn’t CDs or FLACs be your best bet?
maybe this only really applies for newer music, perhaps digital releases for music recorded analogue are just digitized vinyl or reel to reel recordings but for music produced in DAWs the highest quality version available for that release would surely be either a CD or a digital FLAC release
I’ve been digital since the 80’s. I got my first CD player Christmas of ‘85. For me personally, I could never get past the scratches and pops on records. In addition, I only owned about 10 LPs so when starting my music collection it really began with CD’s. What’s really weird is some of those 80’s CDs I still have because the remasters over the years sounded worse. Mind you, this applies only to about 10% of them as 90% of the time the remasters over the years sound better. Digital back then was inferior to the sound on an LP but didn’t have the scratches and pops and was more dynamic (my record player back then was not the best however). Anyway, I guess I’m saying I went the digital path over the years as that was the media I owned. I will say digital (to me) really got “great” with SACD, DVDA, Blu Ray - basically with 24/96 and 24/192 masters. I prefer the physical media over streaming as well as I hate “renting” music (and movies too!). I made a huge mistake years ago ripping all my CD’s on a hard drive and selling my CD’s. 3 iTunes crashes later and transferring everything to yet another external hard drive (and hoping it won’t crash) I have found myself buying back a lot of music, mostly at garage sales for .50 a CD. Anyway, I have heard great vinyl rigs (still had the issues I described - even after the nitty gritty record cleaning before putting it on the turntable! This said, whatever format gets you into the music is the way to go.