The use of “cd quality” is used to establish a benchmark. There are way too many formats to list here for music files. Some are terrible compared to cd and some are superior to cd. It all has to do with the bit rate and amount the information is compressed. The lower quality highly compressed uses less bandwidth. That was necessary a few years ago as the bandwidth coming into our homes could not achieve hi res files. CD’s imo are only falling out of favor from the advancement of quality dac’s. A cd player will never have an internal r2r balanced dac in it. Yes they are making transports only but with the quality of streaming who needs it unless as like I do I still have my over 2000 cd’s. I use an old blue Ray player feed into my Gustard R26 dac and they do sound very good.
What am I missing?
When discussing streaming we often hear the quality achieved by streaming compared to "cd quality". "Cd quality" seems often to be the standard by which streaming is favorably compared while cds have at the same widely fallen into disfavor as a medium. If "cd quality" continues to be a quality standard by which we judge streaming services -which it appears to be- why exactly do we hold cds in such disfavor? More sophisticated dacs can always be employed with cd transports as they are with streaming. I understand the convenience and storage issues with cds but I also understand that with streaming you will never own the music which you do with cds. This becomes even more unclear to me when considering the resurgence of vinyl and the storage and convenience issues involved with this medium. I don't believe the music industry ever wanted us to own the music we listen to but rather preferred we only rent and pay for that music each time.