Not seen that Jan - will investigate
Edit - its an amplifier. Airplay and spotify connect. Lost interest in 20 seconds 
OK, so my two penny’s worth.
My system runs a Raspberry Pi streamer (MoOde software, FWIW) via SPDI/F into the very wunnerful nDAC/XPS, and thence to my 82/Supercap. The system also has a CDX, and I tend to run my most recent CD purchases through the CDX, before being ripped to the NAS.
Recently I had to loan my CDX to my wife while her CD3.5 was “back in the ‘shop”.
So for a laugh, I connected up a vintage (as in, it was s/h when we bought it, and that must be last century!!) Meridian 200 transport via SPDI/F into the nDAC.
And I’ve found that the M200, sounds indistinguishable from the RPi streamer playing the rip (dBPoweramp) of the same CD.
My conclusion therefore must be that over-riding factor for SQ is the nDAC/XPS.
As ever in this hobby, other opinions are available.
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Just put the accurately ripped CD Wav format onto a USB stick and plug it into your NDS,and you will hear the music better than from any CD player.
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Absolutely. The perfect digital source won’t colour the sound at all, the character of the sound comes from the DAC and how it reconstructs and filters the audio, combined with how the analogue output stage is designed.
Once you’ve heard a few DACs in action (naim, Chord, Weiss etc.) this is more obvious. Each brand has a sonic character.
We use a RPI into our office SuperUniti, with the right HAT it’s a surprisingly decent source (and provides things the SU can’t like Tidal Max Connect and internet FLAC radio).
Sounds better, or just different? The CD I listened to at my dealer many years ago when I bought my first NAIM system was Herbie Hancock’s “Gershwin’s World”. That disc is still my reference disc, and I use it when fussing with speaker placement, butt placement on my couch, or just generally obsessing about how the system sounds.
Gershwin’s World sounds best to me when played by the Pro-Ject transport through the NDX2. But it also sounds really good through the NDX2 via Qobuz. So for me, they both sound really good, and convenience dictates how I listen to the music.
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Great SQ for sure. Joni Mitchell’s voice is mesmerizing IMHO
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Just ordered a cd off ebay for £3.80!
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I think you must be referring to ground plane or powersupply noise with the CDS3 and CDX2. I can’t say I ever noticed that… but the DAC , DSP, clock and decoupling setups in the NDX2 and more advanced than those older CD players.
In the limit the noise from the digital streaming front end is going to be at least equivalent I suspect to a CDM. Quite a lot of digital processing takes pave to extract audio from a CDDA just like quite a lot of processing takes place a network or USB interface.
I think you will find it’s all in the electrical filtering and decoupling.
To the OP’s title question, a CD transport directly creates the SPDIF / I2S without an intermediary other than typically a data buffer. A ripped CD goes through severeal layers or processing. The CD DA extraction, writing into a file. Then reading/parsing the file, packaging and sending the data via a network, or rendering locally into a DAC. If by a network, the network stack has to assemble the data, send into a streamer buffer, and then a clock has to regerate the SPDIF or i2s stream. You can see a direct CD player is simpler though less convienient potentially
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Simon, not having a technical bent I don’t really understand any of that. My point was more simply that from both my CDX2 and later CDS3 there was always a slight rattle from the laser which could be heard when the play button was pressed from both the actual machine and through the speakers, and with the streamer and the music coming from a SS source in effect that noise was eradicated?
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Hi @Simon-in-Suffolk
Your last paragraph explains everything in such simple terms for somebody like me, who is ignorant on such matters. Thank you
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Curious - I never noticed that, and still use my CDX2 (original) from time to time.
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Thank you for the feedback, I am glad I could help.
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Like a SNAIC.
I now have a CD555, prior to this the CDS3, the only thing I noticed with the this player was that the mech seemed a little noisy. I always blamed this on the the lid never experienced with my CD5, in comparison to the CD555 there is no comparison in terms of noise.
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You are cheating a bit there right 
In a CD-transport you are doing quite a lot of stuff. Controlling a laser, spinning a physical disc at varying speed, converting the pit-stream to a bit-stream, following varying redbook-tokens and on top of all that you do are error-correcting.
When you rip all this processing is done while writing. So when playing (listening) you just have to read the file and kick the data to the DAC (now it was my turn to cheat :-))
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You are absolutely right of course, but I suggest that is a constant whether you are ripping or playing. and playing from a disc drive equivalent considerations exist as to reading from an optical disc
I am a lot less knowledgeable than many here, but I think you are both saying “it’s a bit more complicated than that’ about the realities of the replay process, which seems likely to be right and relevant to both formats.
Doesn’t that just leave us with giving both options a listen?
The convenience factor of no cds, plus access to streaming and radio, lp needledrops etc was the decisive factor. But I run vinyl as the alternative/physical option. If i didn’t I would probably have a transport into my ds.
When you do bit perfect accurate ripping,the ripp is bit perfect,that’s never achieved in a CD player that always needs to interpolate in real time.