When, as the author described, MP3 and Napster etc. came along, I was pretty much imune to it. I would never trade sound quality for convenience large scale, and MP3 was anything but good sound quality.
Yeah, 128er and lower MP3s were/are bad back then (with 320er I have no issue as said previously). During Napster times we here still had mostly dialup connections except universities and even lowe quality took forever. And I was not immun I fear…
I re-did the whole thing in lossless (ALAC), so I’d never have to do this again.
That is exactly my way when I slowley/occasionally work on my CDs.