Sound quality issues streaming from Tidal vs CD

I have the same Pro-Ject Ultra S2 Streambox and run Tidal Hi-Fi through it.  It sounds lovely.  I’m sure a streamer at 5x the price would sound better, but I’m very pleased with it. 

Duckworp 

i have a single wired drop into my audio room (Cat 5e soon to be Cat 7 - a euro standard) connected to a network switch sitting with my Mac mini and drobo disk array. The network patch cables are Cat7 from wall outlet to switch, Audioquest Vodka from switch to an Ultrarendu and An Audioquest Cinnamon cable from a 2012 Mac Mini. The Utrarendu / LPS2.1 is plugged into a dedicated 20 amp outlet, the Mac min another 20amp outlet and the Cisco switch is plugged into a shunyata Hydra 4. My Fios modem is in my basement 2 floors down from my listing room.  It is my experience a hardline connect gives better results than WiFi and that well made network cables are an important component to good sound. 

Remember, what we are dealing with are digital signals being transmitted in an analog format. All of the devices in the digital transmission chain should be seen the same way normal analog device/interfaces  are.
steve

In my experience the streamer impacts the sound. I added a Meridian Sooloos Ms600 to my system to allow streaming through my Simaudio Moon 650D CD.  I was running Roon off my laptop in another room by my router.  Network connections were Cat6 Ethernet cable and Ethernet over powerline adapters.  I had music files on a USB hard drive hooked up to my laptop. Tidal aside for the moment, I could never get songs streamed from my hard drive via the MS600 to my Moon 650d to sound as good as CD played directly on the 650D. As an experiment, I tried using Simaudio’s own streamer instead of the Meridian MS600 and, what do you know, streaming files from my computer now sounded the same as CDs!  Turns out, the Meridian MS600 imposes it’s own sonic signature on the sound and it was not as much to my liking. The Moon streamer has the same Simaudio house sound that I liked and was pretty much indistinguishable from the transport in the 650D. So, streamers impact the sound.

i also found that the digital coax cable I used between the streamer and the DAC influenced the sound, though not as much as the streamer itself. In this way it was like switching out any other cable in my system. 

I have now dropped CD entirely and just use. Simaudio Moon 780D V2 streamer/DAC. Yet even with this expensive component, WAV files streamed locally from my hard drive sound a bit better than the same 16/44.1 FLAC file off of Tidal. I’m not sure why this is. Maybe Tidal FLAC files are compressed and suffer slightly in the uncompressing process?  Maybe streaming inserts a little noise into the system?  I’d love others’ opinions!

You need a better Router I think..
Try it from a MacBook.
I use an Explorer2 and it sounds fantastic..

In my Mid-Fi system , I have the following . Oppo 105, Musical Fidelity’s transport, and Windows based laptop ( wireless ) running Tidal with partial MQA unfolding . All three feed my Schiit Yiggy DAC . They are all very close in SQ . However , I had a significant SQ improvement as I moved from a cheap USB cable , to an Audio Quest Cinnamon, and then to a Cardas Clear . I have a router dedicated just for the laptop . I also run a power supply with the laptop as well as a good condition battery . So first get a better cable . Then tune your router . Also sub in a nice laptop for comparison. After that , get a better streamer . Cheers , Mike B.