@mikhailark I have ripped my CD collection to uncompressed FLAC using dB Poweramp. I have it on an external drive hooked to my ASUS PC - the same one I use for streaming. I have listened dozens of times with different songs to see if I can hear a difference between the CD played through a Jay's Audio CD3 MK III vs. a Qobuz stream of the same file vs. my ripped FLAC. The process I use is to make sure the volume is equalized between sources and then play an entire song from the two sources I'm comparing at the time. I even take notes of things I've noticed and their place in the track so that I can listen for that event in the other source. FWIW I'm running through a Berkeley Audio Alpha Reference II MQA DAC. The streamed files are run through an Alpha USB before the DAC.
So far, the sound of the CD, the streamed file, and the FLAC have sounded identical. One of my main points is that people are spending thousands of dollars on fancy streamers because a PC supposedly adds noise and distortion to the signal. I admit I haven't compared a 5 figure streamer to my PC but if my PC sounds as good as a CD played through a state-of-the-art transport then I think that's probably about as good as it gets. I don't think I've ever read a review that says that a high end streamer sounds way better than a CD or a ripped FLAC.
If your point is that we should be using a ripped FLAC as the control for comparison (I suggest using zero compression) than that is fine. My point is that comparing streamers to one another by disconnecting one and hooking up another without any means to compare them against a control is inviting expectation bias to influence what we hear. Without any means of comparison to a standard, I submit that the more expensive streamer will always sound better - along with the ultra expensive internet switch and the thousand dollar USB cable.
