If you’re comparing a CD player to a streamer driving an outboard DAC, then the difference may be largely attributed to the differences in DACs. If your cd player has digital inputs, i.e. USB, you can compare the sound more accurately and probably not hear much difference provided your streamer is on the same level as your player. I did this comparison just recently using Aurender N200 into the USB input of the Marantz SA-10. I compared both local files and streaming from Qobuz and Tidal. In some cases it was too close yo call. Generally though the hires streaming is on par with CDs.
If I had the N200/Bricasti M3 combo, then the sound is completely different from the configuration I described above. There’s no advantage of spinning CDs unless it’s a rare album not available on streaming. In that case just rip it to a nice SSD and you should be good. All about the quality of the components pretty much.
Music through streamer vs CD/SACD
I wonder what method is used by the platforms to upload music to the cloud, I imagine something simple like a digital ripper or hard drive on a PC. For this reason, I consider it useless to rate the sound quality if you have high-end equipment. I think that listening to an SACD on a +$15k player to compare with a streamer of the same price range, there will be a noticeable difference. What do the experts here think?