It took me about 3 months rip my vinyl. I used Audacity. I’d use Amplify to normalize my LP side to -1db then tell the software where to split the tracks. I’d do some light, manual click removal if needed. Once the tracks were split I’d type in the metadata and attach album art

It’s a major pain in the butt but I don’t miss vinyl collecting.

All romatisicm aside, yes you are right. FLAC & CD are better than vinyl from a technical standpoint.

The reason that I sometimes prefer vinyl is the different mastering. Take the beatles white album for example. It’s been released on many different froms, like the original 1968 UK Vinyl, the 1978 remaster that was pressed on white vinyl (my favorite), the MFSL remaster from the 80’s (too much treble boost in the EQ for my tastes), plus dozens of other versions pressed on vinyl before we get to the two CD remasters and finally the 50th anniversary remaster.

Every one of these will sound a different, and sometimes the differences in the mastering will be more beneficial to the sound quality than the technical advances of CD/FLAC.

I agree with you that one one downside to this is the time it takes to download or rip CDs/vinyl then edit metadata.

I don’t use a media server. I use my PC for downloading, ripping, organizing metadata, converting file formats, and shopping on Bandcamp then drag-and-drop the files to my Android. I’m into car stereo as well as home stereo and headphones/IEMs & to accomodate all of my use cases it’s best to use my phone as my music player.

I don’t use DSD & convert hi res downloads to 16 bit, 44.1 or 48 KHz, so my whole collection fits on a micro SD card.