bits is bits

The only problem I see here is that the OP is using an HP laptop to Use as a streamer. Until you’re ready to jump into the deep end of the pool, you are always going to have this kind of conversation of bit is bit. Getting a dedicated streamer from any of the big three InnuOs, Aurender or Lumin You’re just spinning your wheels. I have no clue what Tom foolery these guys are doing, but they’re smacking the heck out of a laptop streamer. 

there has to be an explanation why a 20K streamer sounds better than a $200 one. 0s and 1s is not it. (I am not doubting, I am asking for an explanation.)

@gkelly  The reason I brought up this question is that I saw someone else making the claim that Tidal was better than Qobuz.  So I was just curious.

I donʻt do any streaming myself.  I just play back digital files from a hard drive.  I have a miniPC running Ubuntu Linux and JRiver, which feeds into a Peachtree DAC.  I have far too much in my collection to ever consider streaming.  I just donʻt need it.

Being a boomer, Iʻve gotten to the age where I want less clutter and stuff.  Nixon was president when I began my audiophile journey.  Iʻve done most all of it over time - FM tuner with a yagi antenna on a rotor, Revox open reel deck I used for location recording, a number of very nice tables (Kenwood, Linn, VPI, Rega),  1300 records in the collection at one point. My CD collection got up to about 600 I think, all of which I have since ripped to hard drive.  My first hi-fi cassette deck was so early, it didnʻt have Dolby in it.  I had to use an outboard Dolby unit from Teac at the time.  I also did dbx later. 

Iʻve done all of that, but now, I just run the Linux PC for my collection on hard drive.  I do stream some things off of YouTube and Internet Radio, but thatʻs not for critical listening.  I sold off the records, table and table wall mount earlier this year.  Just the PC and monitor in the corner with the amp stack and speakers.  

https://russbutton.com/Russ/photos/Living_Room_2025.jpg

I would love to know how audio streaming is done by different services. What is being done to the files by Qobuz and Tidal. I don’t know. Does a streamer process Qobuz and Tidal streams differently? How are the files stored…compression methods, delivery, decoding by streamers. It clearly can’t be the same as Tidal sounds different from Qobuz. What sounds better is debatable. I know some hate Tidal MQA but my DAC sounds amazing playing MQA from Tidal. I believe it’s more dependent on how the streamer and DAC process this data. But there’s not enough information to draw any conclusions. 
As to laptop streaming, yeah it works. But it’s not an ideal set up. Noise, USB implementation not optimized for high performance music streaming will result in sub optimal sound. Get a dedicated streamer or a dac with a good built in streaming card. 

@parkergetdean 

I am also a retired IT guy with 35 years of experience.  Without getting deep into the never ending arguement as to the "bits is bits", the big differences in the high to low end streamers are usually include:

• general quality of components, including power supplies and shielding
• how they handle the inherent jitter in the digital side, and the quality of the digital clocking circuit
• how noise (electrical circuit and EMI/RF) is minimized or filtered out
• amount and speed of buffering of the streaming data is available 
• and probably the most important piece, is how well the digital "file" data is converted into the 'next' stage signal... such as analog if using the internal DAC, into an optical signal, SPIDIF, or HDMI.

And as @gkelly mentioned... typical computers are among the among the worst at just about all the above issues.

As for Qobuz sounding better than Tidal, I agree.  Not bringing hi-rez files into the discussion, I think a lot of it has to do with possibly different masters (or remasters) supplied from the original source(s), as well as differences in encoding software used to create the streaming file.  While I've never seen any info from either Qobuz or Tidal on what the format(s) they get or use for the "masters", I don't think those masters are what is actually streamed. Most likely they are ripped or converted (or down sampled from hi-rez, DSD, etc.) into a FLAC, AIFF, etc. file.  So different software, configurations, equalization settings, etc. would create differences...

... Just my 10 cents  (adjusted for tariffs and inflation... lol)

Jeff