@ghdprentice You are sort of right. It is just numbers. There should be absolutely no difference. The same numbers should sound the same played back through the same DAC, but they do not. Something is happening somewhere down the streaming line to corrupt those numbers. I have run this test many times on many systems demonstrating to people why streaming is a problem for quality listening. The result is always the same, a blank look and a four letter word. Streaming is fine for background music and shopping for new music.
As for the other issues, you are correct in vinyl being extraordinarily variable. Both vinyl and digital are subject to the quality of the recording, but where digital really shines is performance enhancing features such as EQ, crossovers, room control, group delay correction, etc. In order to take advantage of these capabilities you have to digitize everything including your turntable. I can take any system and I do mean any system and make it sound better with digital signal processing. I can also show you graphically where the problems in any system lie. The purists have a hard time buying into this and I always get an arguement. Even the very best analog systems will have noticeable issues that become obvious once you clean them up. Every time I do the corrected vs uncorrected AB demonstration I get the same blank look and four letter word.