I'm doing eveything wrong.
I stream through my Asus ROG laptop computer which is connected to my network through wifi. I hook up the laptop to my Berkeley Alpha USB/Alpha Reference DAC Series 2 MQA, via cheap USB cable. When I play a Qobuz file and I'm careful to play the same version as a CD I own, the sound is identical to the CD played through my Jay's CD 3 Mk III into my Berkeley DAC.
When people implement all this esoteric stuff to their digital infrastructure, do they ever compare the sound to a CD? Does anybody ever get to the point where streamed music sounds better than the same song/version played from a CD? How bad did the streamed music sound to begin with?
I don't see how a streamed file with all of the complicating issues that have been described in this thread can ever sound better than the same file played from a CD through a good quality transport into the same DAC.
I don't get it.