HDTracks Downloads vs Qobuz/Tidal Streaming

[zoltan]

@dontheriault If your streamer does the decoding of flac files it will stress the CPU and take away some juice from the power supply too. This was mentioned by somebody earlier. If you build a system where these two processes are done separately (like: Roon server + Roon Ready, HQ Player + HQ Player NAA) this will not not happen as the server is usually a very powerful PC/Mac/Linux bases machine and the streamer transport is separated by the network. I have a fanless PC running Roon+HQ Player and my SOtM SMS-200 ultra is used for streaming from there. Local files are stored on the server and both Qobuz and Tidal are integrated under Roon. 
I have hundreds of CD rips from XRCD, FIM, Analogue Production, Gold CDs, RVG editions, Reference Recordings from CDs I owned and also HDtrack files. CD rips are all AIFF (uncompressed) format. 
It is very hard to identify if two releases ( masters) are the same or not so very difficult to do A/B testing but when I was able to do that, there was absolutely no difference in the sound quality between the local files (uncompressed) and Qobuz (flac). My system is about USD80K system (not bragging, just for reference) and reveals practically any small change. Maybe my ears don't :-)  
Try to build a two machine playback system. This is what Roon recommends too.