The Rapid Rise (& Fall) of the CD

"I have wondered whether errors in the music while being transported over the internet/server/etc just create more issues than a simple CD transport to the DAC. "

The answer is no. The interent simply wouldn’t work at all if data were not transmitted accurately.

One thing that can occur is line noise getting into the connection to dac from streamer and causing jitter, however that is not a practical issue even anymore with modern DACs and streamers that are designed to deal with that effectively, ie are jitter resistant.

CD or streaming might sound better case by case.  The devil is in the details.

The Stereophile thread is more sophisticated on this topic. Thanks for the link.

BTW I have multiple streamers in several rooms of the house and have used wi-fi (wireless LAN connections) exclusively since I started streaming in place of CDs 15 years ago (wow how time flies).  These days I stream mostly with Roon and that includes high resolution files  up to 192 khz.  As long as the wifi connections are all strong, this works like a charm, sounds greate, and isolates my hifi completely from network wiring and any noise/jitter issues that might pop up there.

There are many independent, off label, small label, and self release artists out there releasing on file sharing platforms, but also media. Cassettes and CD's, because of the economies of production will be around for awhile yet. Some artists I follow only release physical media on cassette and CDr. Many also sell/publish digital files. Think R. Stevie Moore and his subscription cassettes, which blazed a trail still much followed, The Corporate Music Business will be just fine (for a time) without selling physical media, if that's how they want to market their commodity.

So in summary, CDs still can play a useful role (including coasters for drinks as mentioned) but sound quality should not be an issue. I still have hundreds of CDs but all are ripped to music server and I play them only from there via Roon these days (I used Plex in the past for many years). They are useful as a backup in case I should lose files in the future and there is not an option to stream some of my favorites from a high res streaming service (I use Qobuz).

Physical media including CDs and vinyl also come in packages with supplemental material that is not available (today) with streaming equivalent. As long as I have internet access to read up on whatever topic I might choose, I tend to not miss the supplemental info in records or CDs much. I can’t remember last time I went to a CD to find out something about what I was listening to. I do go to records however on occasion for that. 331/3 vinyl still retains the unique advantage of being a larger format that also often also includes interesting supplemental information and materials. CDs are smaller and less useful that way, though box sets and newer expanded editions make an effort to compensate for that in cases where the market interest supports such products. Demand for physical media is likely to not go away totally for quite a while yet, but these days it all plays a distant second fiddle to streaming and all the advantages and conveniences that go with it.