CD transport vs.streaming

When you stream music that's encoded using a lossless codec what goes to your DAC is identical to what comes from a CD. When you stream from a free streaming service there's a good chance that you're getting a compressed stream that has lower quality. I rip CDs to WAV format, which saves music in exactly the same format it has on the CD. And as far as I can tell it sounds the same when I play it.

A factor I left out the other day: the quality of the codec that's used to convert from the data stored on a CD or in a file to the stream that travels over the network or through the data path from the CD transport to a DAC.