Cd's versus rips versus streams - in my experience all can sound either wonderful , acceptable , poor or downright awful - it depends on the origin of the master source and care used in the final mastering by the engineer as far as I can tell - Steven Wilson has a deft touch on the mixing desk for instance , some of my early purchase CD's are just plain poor but when ripped carefully and in a lossless format some sparkle is restored ? I suspect its due to the way the data is read and stored but Digital is weird at the best of times!