Music through streamer vs CD/SACD

My SACD player sounds different than my streamer. My 3 different streamers all had a unique sound. This was surprising. A CD/SACD music delivery system is simpler than the path the bits travel in a stream. 

BTW - if you want a $15k SACD player for $700 - $1000 look at the D.Bob. I use a very cheap OPPO player as a transport. My prior SACD player was one of the best ever made, a modded Sony SCD-1 Vaccum State Level 5+. The D.Bob can compete with that player.

GeerFab Audio D.BOB Digital BreakOut Box – Upscale Audio

I have a high end CD player and a high end streamer. The sound quality of a red book CD is the same locally stored, from disk or from streaming. For high resolution albums, streaming sounds better. Qobuz has over half a million high resolution albums.

In general a in the fifteen to twenty K range they can be the same. But like everything in audio, you must make carful choices in equipment that is both compatible with your taste, is best in class and is compatible with the rest of your equipment. .

You can see my system under my UserID, my CD sound quality = streaming = vinyl. With the same material they sound the same. This is by design, I wanted a specific sound, so my CD player, DAC, Phonostage, and preamp are the same (Audio Research Reference level)… and I chose a phono cartridge and streamer to achieve the same sound.

If by platforms you mean the streaming services, no, they are not ripping cds or using pcs. I don’t know how the transfer is done but I assume files are sent by the record labels to the streaming services over the internet and stored on servers. Again I don’t know how they send out the streams to individuals, but I’m sure it involves a lot of sophisticated professional computer equipment. These services are not run out of someone’s basement.

Qobuz and Tidal have at least a million albums available, many hi-res. That would be a lot of ripping and hard drives.

Both can sound equally excellent.  To me the main difference is there’s obviously near unlimited music thru streaming and tons of hi-res recordings you can’t get by spinning a silver disc.

They should complement each other.  My DSD recordings from SACD are the best sounding in my collection but red book and streaming can also sound excellent.  Not all music is available on SACD and the future of the format isn’t bright