Stream vs digital download

So I just tried to albums, what's $36 to try something you enjoy. I downloaded a Sierra Hul, 25 Trips and Sarah Jarosz Undercurrent. Compared a couple songs to the Qobuz stream and I must say there is just a little something extra on the downloaded version playing from the hard drive in my Innuos. Now we are talking subtle differences, but for an album I really enjoy I will consider buying the Flac download now. The higher female vocals had a slightly smoother presence and the overall sound seemed more organic. I hate to use that word but it just fits.
@bgoeller I used to have a Sony DVP9000ES and a lot of CD's. However, 2 years ago, shortly after our home was built, but before the alarm was installed we had a break-in. My basement was being finished and they smashed the window in the basement. Among the stuff they took was a box of my CD's which happened to basically be my top 2 rows which was all my SACD's, many of which were out of print now. So that pushed me to get into streaming. I agree I liked having the CD in my hand, but I was not ready to re-purchase all the ones I lost.

bgoellerYou got the system dependant part right. The only streamer I have that is noticeably inferior is the BluSound. The rest are tweaked enough that comparing is nonproductive. A good experiment would be to record a stream and compare the sound of the file to a download of it.
I really don't care enough to bother.

One problem with streaming is that you are at the mercy of your ISP. If they decide to throttle down the bandwidth at given times, your high Rez streams may lose some vibrancy..

     I think bgoeller's post was very good and, overall, it matches my experiences, especially his ranking of quality levels and stressing the importance of provenance in downloads.  
      I haven't downloaded any DSD files yet, only 24/96 files, but I perceive significant sound quality improvements with downloads that have the provenance of being recorded/mixed direct to digital, mainly in increased levels of details, much greater and more realistic dynamic ranges and stereo soundstage imaging three-dimensionality and realism.  This makes sense since these are literally exact copies of the master recordings.
      I use a Lumin D2 dac/streamer, a separate Synology hard drive and an iPad as an interface, mainly for convenience but also because the sound quality is very good.  I currently have all my cds ripped to the hard drive, along with numerous hi-res 24/96 files, and hardly use my cd player any more.  I use Tidal to stream through my main system and Spotify to stream through a laptop/dac/iheadphone amp system. 
     For overall sq, I'd definitely rate 24/96 downloads as the best, ripped cds next and streaming as the poorest quality.  My opinion of just streaming sq, however, is that Tidal is better than Spotify.

Tim

I don't think bandwidth should be an issue as audio files are miniscule compared to other streams on-line, Netflix for ex.  

Using Primephonic I have run some file fragments through MusicScope and compared to ripped CD files.  As far as I can tell they are identical.