Is it in my head only?

For the last few months, most of my listening is done via streaming with Tidal. I have not bought a CD since last year. One problem I had was that the sound was never as good as a rebook CD, it came close but no cigar. I was sure that Tidal's HiFi subscription was overkill and I was better off switching to a cheaper alternative like Spotify.

Besides the quality of sound (or the lack thereof), there was too much buffering and drops ruining the whole experience. I was quite ready to ditch Tidal, or even streaming altogether and go back to buying CDs.

So last Friday, I decided to replace my ISP-provided router with Apple Airport Extreme. It immediately took care of range extension, buffering and persistent drops. But what shocked me was the increase in the quality of sound. Immediately I could notice that there was a certain fullness (warmth?) to sound, base was more pronounced (in a good way) and the music was much more engaging than before. In other words, Tidal finally rocked!

I'm just wondering if it's all in my head or what. I mean can a router improvement make such a not-so-subtle improvement in streaming quality? Regardless, I'm loving it. Next on my to-do list is to replace my Apple TV with Bluesound Node. I've heard that this will take the sound quality to the next level.