Why are so many people spending so much money to build “perfect” streaming system?

Are you living inside a vacuum tube? 

No offence. 

@walkenfan2013 it doesn’t have to be complicated. There are plenty of one box solutions out there that sound excellent. For a price of one CD per month you have enormous library of music at your fingertips.
Spend few hundred bucks and try a bluesound node streaming Qobuz

Get a bluesound node. Easy to set up and use, good sound, and not at all expensive. Once you actually start to stream, you’ll get why all the fuss. From there you can decide if you want to spend big bucks to upgrade. And if not for some reason, you can sell it and make back most of your money. 
An analogy - taking up golf or tennis, you buy in cheap, go to a public course,  if you like it playing, you upgrade, if not, no big loss.

I'm out of touch as well...

I have 95% of the physical media (LP's CD's) in hand that I wish to listen to.

If I find something that I like (but do not own) I simply purchase it on CD/LP.

I've experienced a multitude a "digital/computer" disasters since I first started using them in the 1980's - not so with my physical media.

As far as improving streaming goes (in my situation) I take 25 mg of Zinc daily and it seems to help.

This said, I do not care for most/all of the "new" music I sample from (basically) Youtube - so this does factor in on my take.

DeKay

Another point, are you still listening to 78 records or have you upgraded to 33 1/3? Also, there’s these new things called CD’s that I hear sound better then records. You do have to buy new equipment. Streaming is just a new way to listen and the cost can be very a reasonable few hundred dollars. Or you can spend $10K on up, it’s really up to you.