Comment by GuestFAUniverse

I have a whole drawer full of barely used cdrom drives from decommissioned office PCs to play my audio discs, in case my Philips Player from 1995 is worn down -- didn't even need a repair yet, so no real worries... Additionally the CDs get backuped as FLACs.

I don't see what's "hard" with that approach. Most new releases still get presses as CDs.