Interesting to see this thread come up again yesterday, and glad that the OP has found a good solution.
In my world, the streamer does make a difference in how things sound, as do the transport or CD player if playing physical discs. Still using Tidal here and happy with the (non-MQA) sonics. I don’t hear much/any difference between streamed Tidal and playing ripped CDs through my server’s SSD. After recent system changes/upgrades I am closer to trying Qobuz but it is really about the content. Can any of you tell me whether Qobuz have improved their blues/rock/pop library, and whether they offer an autoplay feature like Tidal? That autoplay feature has been great for me, both for convenience when having people over and not wanting to babysit the music selection and also for hearing new tunes or revisiting tunes I have forgotten about. When it first came out, it seemed that Qobuz was known more for their classical content but if they have gotten closer to Tidal with the other genres, it is time for me to give them a try. The autoplay feature would be a welcome plus.