OP,
Sounds to me like you made a good case for streaming to be better sound quality soon, if it is not now. (today, it simply depends which one you are comparing to which).
Consider a player is an optical computer file storage device, a streamer, and a DAC. It is reading computer files.
A streamer receives computer files from internal storage, external storage, or from a streaming service. Protocols in various places make sure the bits are identical. After this the player and DAC for a streamer do the same thing.
You can take those files and put them on a hard drive and read them from there… or put the files on a local network drive and read them from there. Or put the files on a set of drives owned by Qobuz and stream them through the internet.
However, where the real problem comes with players… they only deal with one file type of relatively low resolution… red book. So, for instance, Qobuz has over half a million albums in high resolution. A trend that will continue… leaving red book behind.