Point of higher priced streamer?

Professing substantial differences in SQ based on, wow I heard veils lifted,  only applies to one person who claims to have heard something without any meaningful attempt to control biases. Now pray tell what does that actually  contribute to understanding if one streamer performs better than another?  Why would I base a purchase decision on hyperbole and cost? Listening with your ears is necessary, listening with your eyes and preconceptions about if it costs more it must be better is unnecessary. 

Could be none of the above. Unless the two were compared with a controlled blind test it doesn't tell us anything. To me Quboz sounds better than a flash drive connected to the streamer, again unless I did this comparison blind it tells us nothing to further our knowledge.

Please explain exactly what you mean by "controlled blind test" and how one would be able to adequately make such a comparison using a file streamed from Qobuz, versus a file on a USB flash memory.

Unless you can prove the files are identical using a checksum hash such a comparison is actually impossible. I don't think you've thought this through much.

There is no compression algorithm for ‘actual’ listening. 

Listening to local music files on a USB memory stick attached directly to the Pro-ject streamer sounds smoother, clearer and with better musical flow than the same track via Qobuz.

Because we have to first determine is this statement true? The only way I know of is can he pick which is which better than chance? 

We're not comparing apples to apples we're trying decide can this person really tell one from the other then we can go on to figure out is it due to hardware? Software?