Why CD players will never be dead

To Steve (Audioengr) or anyone else inclined to explain...How is it possible for a copy of a CD played from a computer hard drive to sound better than the original CD? I'm not trying to be argumentative. I would really like to understand what the improvement derives from. Is it the "ripping" (copying?) process that unlocks more info from the original CD? or is it the bit stream being read off the hard drive that is some how superior to what a conventional (or even mod'd.) CD player can produce? Is it the result of something else? I don't get it.

Nonoise- Thanks for the helpful reply. I have a bit more of a clue about this now.

Thanks to all that replied. This is a very helpful thread.

The discussion on this thread was helpful. I think I'm going to dip my toe in the water of computer audio and sample some stuff from HD Tracks. Looks like I can download FLAC 92/24 music files from them and also get a trial version of JRiver.

Do I have this right? FLAC is a lossless hi res version of the music but I will need JRiver to play the FLAC file from my PC. Output will be USB to V-Link to V-Dac to pre-amp. Major Question for me: How do I disable Windows Media Player so only JRiver is outputting? If I'm making some incorrect assumptions please advise.

Thanks in advance.

Thank you, Steve. I'm streaming Pandora and the ASUS netbook recognizes the V-Link automatically. Is "Kernel Streaming" an option to look for w/i JRiver? No clue as to what a WASAPI plug-in might be. I visted the dppoweramp site. I think I'll wait a bit before trying to convert FLAC downloads. I'm already straining my 20th century analog brain. Any thoughts about accessing files downloaded to an external hard drive? Thanks again.