Discerning a difference between streamers is difficult...only me or common for all?

Ten years ago I bought the original blue sound vault. At first it was good enough. Over time I went back to vinyl. About a year ago i started to convert my system to optimize streaming. I bought a holo spring 3 level 2 dac and used the vault as a  streamer. The improvement was more than subtle but not huge. When the new blue sound nodes came out I bought the "older" n130 node and used it as a streamer. The improvement in sound quality surprised me. Timber, tone, depth and separation of instruments improved. I thought the node/holo spring 3 combination sounded very good but a tad warm. I bought an innuos pulse. The change in sound was subtle but important to me. There was more sparkle to cymbals and a little more sizzle to the high notes of a French horn. What surprised me was that I could  now understand what more of what the singers were saying. Not a big difference, but enough to keep the innuos. By the way the innuos app is very usable for someone who does not like computers. 

I’m not going to doubt what you heared but…

Some of the things that can mask the difference between components and cables in a system:

1. Room acoustics

2. Speaker positioning

3. Objects like large furniture between listening chair and speakers

4. Excessive bass

Something to consider when you’re comparing components. But you said you hear large differences in phono stages so perhaps your system is streamer/transport agnostic. Have you tried a CD transport compared to your streamer?

OP, to get the most out of your digital, you have to optimize the whole chain from the wall to the DAC. This includes going to a fiber optic connection which can be a bit of work. The server/streamer to get is the Taiko if cost isn't a consideration, almost as good is the Playback Designs stack which would entail replacing your current DAC. A lower cost alternative would be the Lumin U1 and L2 streamer/file server stack which is what I use.

@dxbwineguy Interesting results, but your test did show that there are difference in streamer SQ.  Can you describe the differences and why everyone preferred the WiiM?

I recently bought a WiiM Pro for one of my sons and I just ordered a WiiM Ultra as a Christmas present for another son.  I've never tried inserting one into my system.  Might be interesting to try it.  

@sls883 I have never been good at describing music- but will try. The WiiM was much clearer, the Hegel was depressed. The WiiM sounded fuller, kind of blooming (not booming).

I forgot to mention earlier- the Hegel of course was hard wired via Ethernet. The WiiM was on WiFi. Ideally the latter should have degraded the performance as compared to an Ethernet connected device but I guess it didn’t. I didn’t even think about this till now.

My overall view of A/B comparisons is a few years when we used to buy TVs and the choice in the showroom was between LCD and Plasma. At that moment LCD would outshine the plasma TV- but if you got the plasma home, which I did, it looked great. I know I might get dissed for saying this - for sure some components provide phenomenal differences but eventually I think what matters is what makes you happy. I have an Eversolo streamer, a WiiM Mini and a WiiM Pro Plus. Am happy. Have always debated about getting an Aurender or a Lumin or something else but eventually decide against it - because the difference for me will be in the first few minutes and then everything sounds the same - to me. Apologies for long post.