Streaming vs. CD

i just compared some lossless tracks from Tidal to the same tracks of my hard drive in FLAC.  hard drive wins hand down.  more atmospheric, harmonic decay.  good bye streamer, hello Quboz and Presto download store.

My conclusion as well.  It makes sense, as with streaming from a vendor such as Tidal or Qobuz, there are some variables we cannot control, such as ISP bandwidth and any any shenanigans that might occur with the content provider.  Streaming is pretty good, and most people might prefer it for convenience.  Burning a large CD collection to a HD can be a pain, but once accomplished for me a much better solution.  I use Qobuz for non classical music listening and to audition new albums

I find Qobuz in hi-res really excellent for classical music. It’s gotten to the point on my system, for the first time, CDs sound identical to streaming. This was never the case previously.
‘Maybe it’s my new Cambridge streamer.

Interesting to see this thread come up again yesterday, and glad that the OP has found a good solution.
In my world, the streamer does make a difference in how things sound, as do the transport or CD player if playing physical discs.  Still using Tidal here and happy with the (non-MQA) sonics.  I don’t hear much/any difference between streamed Tidal and playing ripped CDs through my server’s SSD.  After recent system changes/upgrades I am closer to trying Qobuz but it is really about the content.  Can any of you tell me whether Qobuz have improved their blues/rock/pop library, and whether they offer an autoplay feature like Tidal?  That autoplay feature has been great for me, both for convenience when having people over and not wanting to babysit the music selection and also for hearing new tunes or revisiting tunes I have forgotten about.  When it first came out, it seemed that Qobuz was known more for their classical content but if they have gotten closer to Tidal with the other genres, it is time for me to give them a try.  The autoplay feature would be a welcome plus.