Digital with same soundstage as analog

Digital done correctly is superior to analog in every way and streaming is definitely NOT the right way to do it. I have a friend with a modest, but effective system who listened mostly by streaming. On his system we compared a 24/96 digital file to streaming of several albums synced so we could AB and there was no comparison. Streaming is like trying to talk with a mouth stuffed with cotton balls. I have to assume they are doing this on purpose to prevent people from recording studio quality files. A middle of the road turntable is superior to streaming. I encourage people who stream to buy a 24/96 file of a favorite album and compare it to a streamed version. 

Once you are in the digital domain there are many things you can do to improve the performance of your system, gains that can not be made otherwise and there is little if any downside. Nobody has yet been able to reliably identify a record from it's 24/96 copy. Just like a three headed tape deck I can play back a recording as it is happening switching back and forth between the actual record and its digital copy. With digital processing you can turn a lackluster system into a great performer and  a great performer into the incredible zone. 

I am an old record collector. My idea of a great time is thumbing through records at the store. I still by records and will never stop, but a good digital file is superior and digital processing makes both even better.

@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.