CD Quality Versus Streaming Quality

Streaming on my system, there’s not much difference between Qobuz HiRes and Tidal MQA.  Tidal has more of the old school R&B music I like so I use it.  I find Qobuz SQ overall better.  I also like the Tidal interface better.

I’ve long since ripped my CD collection to FLAC on an Innous Zenith MK2 streamer.  Those sound very nice as well and better than comparable Qobuz or Tidal albums.  I have a few DSD128 albums on the Zenith as well, and they sound the best by far.  DSD64 sounds OK but no better than Qobuz HiRes in most cases.  

That said, me and my friends all agree, my vinyl rig sounds the best.  

You guys are probably think I’m goofy but I’ve been experimenting with a bunch of different stuff. I went pretty deep down the DAC rabbit hole ending up with a $10,000 Meitner. Honestly it’s hard to tell the difference between that and a $2000 mytek. So I hooked up some older equipment I had that was made back in the early 90s by DBX. It’s called a 4BX expander and it really does expand the music. I don’t know how to explain it but it was designed to undo the compression I’m guessing they put into records back in the day. It does seem to have the same affect even after the music has been streamed to a DAC and then converted back to analog. 
Back to the conversation I find streaming much more enjoyable and much better sounding than the CDs that I have. I also thoroughly enjoy finding new music, there’s so much stuff I would’ve missed if I would’ve only stock with the CDs that I have.

No.
No.
Don’t worry about it. Just enjoy the music in the best format that is sensible.
If you're perfectionist, a Redbook copy printed onto a gold disk often sounds better than the original. If you like listening repeatedly that is probably the way to go. If you like sampling a big part of the  recorded music universe Qobuz is the best value.
Tidal meh!

A few points.

Your original post points out the reason there is such a vibrant market in streamers and other related hardware. From the very beginning the goal was to bring streaming up to the point of CD quality. There are a lot of factors that can affect the sound quality from streaming. People spend thousands of dollars on their streaming hardware to achieve better sound quality. CD player quality has plateaued at a very high level. Streaming is still catching up.

It is a fallacy that the files that the record companies give to the streaming services are more compressed than the original CDs. There are millions of songs on the major streaming services and it is physically and financially impossible for the record companies to remaster them for this purpose. They are too cheap and lazy to do this but the main question is why would they do it? They have nothing to gain from this exercise. The 30 year old 44.1/16 Santana file you hear on your CD is exactly the same as the 44.1/16 file on Tidal or Qobuz (MQA is a different story). This has been verified numerous times. If someone found that the original file had been corrupted by further compression it would be a major scandal that the streaming company couldn't live down.

The idea that Tidal or Qobuz would compress the files themselves is also ridiculous. Their whole business model is centered around offering CD quality through their premium streaming services.

I have burned several thousand CDs using dB Poweramp (FLAC, uncompressed) and I can tell you that in my system the ripped file sounds exactly like the CD played through the same DAC. I can also tell you that 320 bit files through Spotify sound exactly as you describe compared to the same CD title. They are two dimensional with less clarity and the difference is not subtle. I'm about to subscribe to Qobuz so I'll have an opportunity to compare its sound quality to the CD version.

My overall reaction to your experience at your son's place is that something is wrong. You shouldn't have heard such a dramatic difference. But pretty soon I'll see for myself.

Interestingly, the CDs I mentioned above, are all at least 15-20 years old and more.

Yes and the later the re-issues the more they get compressed as I’ve shown. And do you think the streaming/download companies are going to search for the used earlier harder to find releases?? (no I don’t think so)

28 years difference of the same thing and what happens to it the younger it is
https://dr.loudness-war.info/album/list?artist=Traveling+Wilburys&album=Traveling+Wilburys

Cheers George