This is a mosh pit, i jump in. I been traveling this road for a time. I started streaming years ago with one of the first Sonos zone players & Napster. Quickly switched over to Deezer streaming at 16/48 as they had an exclusive contract with Sonos. Had an old Sony CD player I was using as a transport always sounded better with both sources going into my Wadia DAC via Coax. Decided to upgrade the CD player and demoed the Cambridge transport. No improvement so I stuck with the old Sony. Then I sprung for the Wyred4Sound mods to the Sonos and got a nice bump in SQ but it still got nudged out by the CD transport. Then the Sony died and I went without a transport. Next step, I got my paws on a Bryston BDP streamer and switched to Qobuz and compared that, @same bit rate, directly with the Sonos and the Bryston took the flag hands down. Always wanted another CD player just to see if it was still better. Finally scored a Bryston BOT-1 memory player that works with the BDP. Did a compare and now the advantage was gone. The streamer SQ was just as good as the transport. I gonna keep the transport so I can do a period rush by slidding in a disc and burn my buddies CDs to disk. Now I am convinced that with the correct setup, Streaming can sound as good as a CD.
If you then tie in Roon the streaming experience becomes even more compelling.
Note: The Wyred4sound Sonos ended up at my GF condo connected to a Shiit DAC and a pair of Audio Engine A5 powered speaker. Made for a tidy condo settup.
