Bits Are Bits, Right?

Yes, digital only exists as a mathematical concept. All of reality is analog (at least the reality we deal with - at the scale of Planck time and Planck lengths things may be different). A stream of “digital” data is an analog signal that a computer has to interpret as a 1 or a 0 by deciding when the value has changed enough and at what time to be interpreted as a different bit.

One of the ways I know that what happens before the data buffer matters is the difference in sound quality between streaming and reading a local file. I have always thought the local file sounds better than streaming even though it’s the exact same data. Just recently, I was driving down the road with a friend when they plugged the phone into the car and the sound quality was much better than usual. I asked what they did, and I found out they were playing songs off the phone’s “hard drive,” whereas I am usually streaming from Tidal. Same data, way different sound.

Yep, I love Tidal but I don’t stream in my audio system. It’s nice to have when guests come over so they can play whatever song they want to hear but for me, it’s physical media or nothing. Now maybe things can be improved with a high quality reclocker or some other technology like asynchronous DACs, but I’ve long noticed that even when streaming through my DAC sounds good, it sounds even better from a CD.

Uberwaltz - you’re right. I’m not being fair to the media. I personally believe that a computer has the greatest potential to sound best of all the mediums, however, computers are notoriously noisy environments and very few computer parts are built with maximizing audio quality in mind. A CD player is a type of computer, albeit one that sounds better, dollar for dollar, than what we typical call computers because they are simpler in nature and purposely built to sound good. Note that I said “potential,” and not “in practice.”

I agree, the source file is all important. Different remasters no doubt sound different. In my car example, I’ve repeated the test several times. When I play the track from my phone’s memory, it sounds better than streaming even with the example same version of the song. The most noticeable part is the bass. From the phone, the bass is much more like a quick “punch,” and when streaming it’s more of a quick “shove,” if that makes sense. “Tighter, faster bass” might be a metaphor I could use.

Last night I copied one of my favorite CDs to a black CD-R and the difference in sound quality between the 2 discs was quite apparent. The treble was much more laid back and “tamed.” I could hear micro-details better. It’s too early to conclude which version is better as they both have their pros and cons. I’m interested in the “why.” Does one disc have more read errors than the other? If not, then I conclude that the way the data (the exact same data, that is) is arranged on the disc matters. The precision of the pit spacing, the width and depth of the pits, and the material of construction of the CDs may play a role. If it’s all the same data and the read errors are minimal, then what is happening before the buffer is having effect on the sound.

Okay, which one of you submitted this question to Paul? The timing is eerie. 
CD or High Resolution Streaming?https://www.psaudio.com/askpaul/cd-or-high-resolution-streaming/

A couple notes from my findings last night:

Black CD-Rs sound pretty good. With my burner and media, 4x burn speed sounds the best. 2x and 1x sound okay but they aren’t as musical as the original pressing.
The media I’m using says max 16x burn speed. Does anyone know if the max burn speed listed on the package matters? Is lower better or is higher?