It has to be something other than simple bitrate. If you're a photographer, the difference is like taking a raw straight out of camera image and applying HDR to it but in a good controlled way.
I found this as I was demo'ing my speakers and didn't have 2ch set up.. i had to find something fast on Youtube and found all these audiophile recordings with really cool imagery.. Sounded great.. so I played similar tracks through Tidal on my 2ch set up and sounded just whatever.