Network Transport vs. CD Transport

George...Marantz CD6000 Original SE. 
Your answer is what I was afraid of. Luckily I still have all my CDs in boxes up in the attic. 

I run Roon on the Mini. It is bit berfect and definitely sounds better than iTunes. Also as I mentioned in my post, the Wyred USB reclocker helped as well.

Thank you all for the responses. Really appreciated. Here’s some more detail on my set up...my apologies in advance for a long rant...
File formats-
AIFF CD rip using iTunes;
Qobuz hi-res, redbook. Roon corr on Mac Mini, wireless. I do not have the modem near my music room. Mac to Wyred4Sound Recovery USB reclocker using Kimber BBus USB cable, then Recovery into the Chord Qutest DAC using DH Labs Mirage 1m USB cable. The Recovery made a very nice improvement in sound by the way. What I don’t like - soundstage is too cluttered and hangs in a narrow space between the speakers. Depth is limited as well. Dynamics and details suffer.  There is glare in the midrange. Vocals are set back, and are recessed. Clarity on vocals suffers, and it seems like there is cloth over the mic. Everything is pretty much a blurb. All components except amp, mac and the Recovery are run off Shunyata Hydra. Amp is plugged directly into wall. All power cords on components are Shunyata Taipan Helix Alpha. Interconnects are AZ Matrix Ref II, speaker cables Purist Aqueous 25th Anniversary. When listening to the same recording on CD, running the CD player as transport into the Qutest DAC, all problems are resolved. There is increased resolution, more clarity in the mids, the glare in the midrange is gone, bass is tighter and more textured. Listening to Audioslave Wide Awake cd rip, the kick drum sounds like a large cardboard box with the Mac, everything sounds compressed. With the cd transport driving the Qutest on the same CD the instruments are better separated, the kick drum sounds realistic AND I can hear the skin on the drums. The vocals are now in front of the band with more subtle details, soundstage is wider and deeper. On classical, the orchestra sounds bigger and deeper, with clearer defined sections and individual instruments are more there as opposed to being cycled thru a sonic “food processor” when played thru the Mac. Listening to my Rega P2 with Goldring E3 cartridge sounds better on some LPs, the sonic signature is in line with the improvements brought in by cd transport. 
I think there are a number of inherent problems with the Mini as a streamer based on my recent findings. One is the internal Power supply. The other is the fact that it isn’t optimized for streaming music in the context of a high end system, as well as limited ability of Roon, or any other bit perfect soft to defeat what the Mini/Apple does with a usb output. I don’t have confidence in dropping more dough on the Mini set up as the difference I heard between it and cd transport is significant enough to make me doubt the gap is bridgeable. Hence my search for a wireless streamer/transport only. I may be wrong but I don’t think I’m too far off. You guys let me know...set me straight...

@lalitk 
yup...thought about google wifi mesh. It’s an option. The reason why Auralic Aries G1 peaked my interest is because it potentially sounds better via wifi (Darko talks about it in his review on youtube). With all the wires I already have behind the component rack, adding more is not too appealing, but I am not opposed to it being an option.

@mountainsong 
Could you please clarify...the Aurender, streaming from Qobuz, does not match the sound of your Luxman D-03x? Is the Aurender driving the Luxman on-board dac?

Appreciate everyone’s thoughts and feedback. Since I started this discussion, night after night I proved to myself that a CD does sound a lot better than the same album rip played thru the Mac Mini. While I don’t doubt that running the Mini wired and adding bells and whistles such as EtherRegen to the set up will improve the sound, I still think that the sonic gap between the CD transport and the Mini is just too large to bridge. Yes, we can throw more money into the Mac set up with mods, etc. but...will it get to where the CD transport is sonically? I’m not sure. 
So I pulled the trigger on the Auralic G1 and it’s arriving next week. The G1’s wireless capabilities are appealing to me and will allow me to get the Mac out of my system. I’ll give the G1 a few days of continuous burn in before I judge it and compare it to the CD player transport (remember the Marantz player is over 20 years old). I hope it’s at least as good or better than the CD. If it isn’t, I’m down the shipping cost, and back to spinning discs. I also like the concept and flexibility of the CD player with digital inputs such as the Luxman 03x that was mentioned in this thread so this may be my fallback option. I’ll report back on what I hear from the Auralic. 

@georgehifi
George I also have faith in the Marantz. I know what I’m looking for from the player and I have a pretty good idea of my system‘s capabilities. We’ll see how it goes.

Update...
The Aries G-1 has about 48hrs of play time by now. I’ve been running it round the clock non-stop. 
Initially it sounded a bit “new” but is evolving nicely. At this point I am running the Lightning DS with Qobuz and the HDD with my AIFF CD rips plugged into the rear of the Auralic. The Auralic sits on my wifi network. 
I am pleasantly surprised so far with both the build quality and the sonics of this streamer - my expectations were exceeded and not by a small margin. There is that silent black background that I wasn’t able to achieve with the Mac Mini, better dynamics, better resolution and separation of instruments, more space around individual instruments and singers, wider and deeper soundstage. 
I plan to run it in some more and do a listening session over the weekend. 
Next steps are to try the Auralic as a Roon endpoint using my Mac Mini as a Roon core. 
There are few things I’m not in love with but they’re all related to Lightning DS interface and have nothing to do with the sound. 

@gelle I thought about the Nucleus. However, I needed a wifi capability. Didn’t want to run more wires for an access point, EtherRegen, etc.

@thyname I felt like I owe you all an update.
Things I’m not in love with right off the bat...
1 - Lightning DS interface. Decent and would do if I haven’t seen Roon. 2 - Qobuz on Lightning DS...can’t see different versions of the album. Can’t see bitrate until you start playing the album or track. Also the artist and album info is not always available. 3. With the HDD connected to the back of Auralic, missing bunch of album artwork. That was never an issue with Roon. What would it take to incorporate a call to a Discogs API or other source to pull down the metadata for cover art...not much at all. Not sure why Auralic chose not to go down that path. Other than that, no major faults and as I said before, the sound quality is far beyond what I expected. Both the mac mini and the CD player are out of my system now.
One interesting observation - the USB into the Chord Qutest DAC sounds better than via coax digital cable.