Sound Quality of red book CDs vs.streaming

Jafant,

Thanks for your acknowledgement.

I have to amend my assessment of pauses between tracks in the various streaming services.
Upon further listening, I found that all the services had the pauses in varying degrees, unfortunately.

Even with Hi-Res "Lossless".  Look at what that signal is going thru to get to you.  Its being pumped through a satellite somewhere, thru the air with (even a digital signal) various atmospheric interferences, solar radiation, etc.  Then it gets to the receiving end of your cable company or internet provider, and is processed thru their mainframe, which could care less about your audiophile precision listening preferences.  Then onward it goes thru miles of street cables (unless its Fiber, which we know has its own weeknesses for audio content), before coming thru your poll, just 18-24 inches under the magnetic fields of the main lines going to your house, and then into your computer, which for most people, is not necessarily a top tear audio platform with designated circuitry.  Is & can Hi-Res be better than Redbook:  Yes.  Is it always better than Redbook after all that transmission grief:  No.

sfcfran, your analogy while interesting is highly exaggerated and not completely accurate. Musical content just like other "data" is transmitted through packets and there are mechanisms along the path to ensure the integrity of the packets. Its not like a "wave" is traveling through air and going through wires and cables, etc. Also, in most if not all cases, satellite is not in play for music content transmissions but as a reference, many get suer high quality video content through the same path you described without even a single frame out of pace.
Sorry about the tangent.

+1, kalali. 

Not sure why but some folks are just eager to express their uninformed opinions instead of speaking from actual experiences. 

Streaming has come a long way in last 3-4 years. Just invest in a good ‘audio’ streamer / DAC combo along with Tidal subscription and prepare to be amazed.