Does a ripped cd onto a digital format sound better than the cd played on the cdp

Steve, Ethernet directly into the DAC?  Not sure how that works. I run Ethernet from my Roon server to a Roon endpoint/renderer but then I2S directly into the DAC.

Actually the process of pulling the bits off the CD disk is an analog process, not a digital process.   However, once it passes through the comparator, it is indeed a digital signal.  For this reason, I feel a lot more confident that the music from ripped CDs and converted into a wave file using a bit perfect software, will sound better than the CD in a player if a bit error occurs during reading of the CD.  If a bit error doesn't occur, they should sound the same, assuming the same DAC is used.  Then again, I'd bet if you are using a music server, odds are you have a way better DAC than the stock one in the CD player.

Steve N did state something very important - that digital cable should be terminated at 75 Ohms and it should have a characteristic impedance of 75 Ohms.   A lot of expensive digital cables don't state whether they are controlled impedance cables or what that impedance is.  I suspect some are but I don't buy them unless they have stated impedance.  Granted, 44KHz is not overly fast for terminated transmission lines but termination is never a bad thing in data transmission.    Besides, a properly terminated line with the proper transmitter impedance and characteristic cable nullifies the capacitance in the cable and the line becomes a purely resistive circuit. 

There is a minor problem is the RCA connector - it isn't possible to get a 75 Ohm characteristic impedance and maintain the physical size of the RCA connector.   BNC's do it just fine but not RCA's.  However, as I mentioned above, 44 KHz is not overly fast for data transmission so this may not matter a great deal.    I use an optical cable for this reason.

Check out this article on data transmission using rusty barb wire at 100MHz data transmission.   That is a data rate about 2300 times faster than our CD data line.  I did see that demonstration at the convention and I chuckled a bit, what a great marketing concept!  http://www.sigcon.com/Pubs/edn/SoGoodBarbedWire.htm

Spatialking,  reflections in digital cable, from impedance boundary, are related to highest rate of change and not the frequency of the signal.  The rule of thumb says, that if signal propagation is longer than 1/8 of the fastest transition time than cable might have reflections.  For example, transitions in typical transport are about 25ns.  Divided by 8 it will make around 3ns.  Since signal moves in cable at about 5ns/m then 3ns corresponds to about 0.6m.  Any cable longer than that (including all internal connections of the source and receiver) will behave like transmission line (might have reflections).  I would feel comfortable with non-impedance-matched cables much shorter than 12"  (I would try to get it under 8").  Otherwise you have to match characteristic impedance of everything on the way and it is not always possible - like in the case of RCA connector, you mentioned.  Since reflections can happen from any impedance boundary it is important to match, as close as possible, of impedance of anything on the way.  That's why good digital cable can be great in one system but poor in another.

I stopped using a $3000 CD player over 10 years ago. Mac mini running pure music or audirvana sounded better. I used to use XLD but switched to MAX.
Disk drives for music are fine to use, SSD’s are way over kill. I used to market enterprise SSD’s for almost 10 years and have done many tests using both mediums. SSD’s are quiet, but you shouldn’t have your computer in your audio room anyway. Most hard disks can read 1 song in 1 rotation of the hard disk which is calculated in Milliseconds. Also remember that anything read from any device on your computer gets placed in memory and that’s the buffer before sending it out to a dac. So any messaging of data occurs in memory. So it’s important to have plenty of ram so you can cached ahead your music.
if you do have a music server/Mac/pc in your audio room, the best interface is i2s which nobody uses. I use Ethernet with cat7 cables since my dac has a network card built in, IMO, the only way to go.