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.
Audiophile rabbit hole is deep. Start with used equipment and second hand vinyl stores. It’s a fun pastime to browse.
Otherwise bandcamp is a fun place to acquire FLAC and vinyl as well.
Essentially this. You don’t need fancy or expensive equipment to start, and you can replace parts as you go about. However, do avoid the all-in-one mobile players from brands like Lenco and Denver. They put really poor quality parts in there that can hurt your records. But anything above that is already good enough
I bought a used super-oem player years ago for €100. They’re more for DJ’s I think, but the quality and maintainability is great and spare parts are abundant.