I almost exclusively use it where I know what I want to listen to, and hope that the search function finds it. It usually does.
Also, I browse the new releases lists and just pick things randomly.
In these use cases the sheer size of the library doesn’t really get in the way.
Because there can never be certainty about continued availability long term, and short term may have internet outages, and because I want my favourite music to be always available, in perpetuity, I buy all tge musuc I like and store in my own local store. I also have a rooted objection to renting. For me, I use online streaming purely for sampling new music, and currently only use free services (e.g. Spotify), for which sound quality is not critical.
I have all my music sorted by genre, so if I fancy some jazz I can pick jazz and then scroll through the albums. It just works for me. Maybe I’m too old and stupid. Also, having worked with musicians I’m very aware of the pathetically small sums they get from streams. Buying music means the people I like get the cash, which seems only right.
Really? I’ve yet to see one, though funnily enough I have been working on something like this over the past week. It strikes me as a good idea but it’s not actually a straightforward proposition. On the one hand most DACs and CD players don’t have anything like enough filtering in them but, on the other, it’s a pretty sure way to kill the sound of your favourite CD player if you don’t do it properly - or the sound of the amp that has it. Nor is it that closely related to how good things sound. I did experiment once with taking all the filtering out of my CD/DVD player and, if anything, the sound was a bit better. But I couldn’t bear looking at it on the scope. 
Do you have any examples of amps that do this?
Sound reasoning. We’ve already lost the joys of proper sized sleeve artwork and inner sleeve information, plus the physical interaction with the disc and turntable. Now they are taking away the joy of ownership and collecting.
Moreover, the reason they are doing it this way is incredibly tawdry. It is because reliable “income streams” are the foundation of monetization. They can be very quickly turned into bonds or other forms of borrowing. This is exactly what your telecoms or mobile service provider does the second you put your signature on that contract. They want that model in music, in printer supplies and, one day, everything. “You will own nothing and be happy”. Yeah, right!
Interesting challenge. For my part I have no specific awareness of such filtering in amps, nor can I say there isn’t, however in various discussions on this forum about Naim power amps and their use with or without Naim preamps, I gained the impression that Naim preamps do filter ultrasonic frequencies.
Edit: I just did a quick search. Para 5 in this, bandwidth limiting: Is the pre-amp a thing of the past? - #163 by Richard.Dane
They do. At least post the 72. That’s the time aligned filter.
I’d call that signal conditioning and I’m not actually splitting hairs there. There is a LOT of EMI these days and a lot of crud coming from digital elements of sources so it has become a necessity. I would describe it as good practice.
Similarly, someone will raise the RC filter on the input of the power amps. That’s really there to avoid anything being sent to the amp that will make it slew. That’s an especially pernicious type of distortion which kind of kills the signal while the Miller capacitor charges. In essence the amp is powerless to react to the signal. I’ll note here that Naim amps have never been offenders on this front.
that was an interesting read. Thanks.
I think I was a little sloppy with my answer and wording of “audible spectrum” as the filter I was describing is intended to mitigate RF interference much higher than the 22kHz OP mentioned.
Where the difference becomes large is on cheaper low end DACs like listening via your iPhone or entry level Walkman etc.
It’s a lot simpler for a DAC to reconstruct a hi res data source into analogue than it is for it to do a decent job of a lower resolution data source. High end DACs do a lot of heavy lifting to reconstruct 16/44 data and effectively fill in by inferring information accurately (ish). That closes the gap significantly with hi res sources.
But on a dirt cheap audio player, the difference sounds huge. Not so much that high res sounds better as it is 16/44 sounds worse.
Interesting - I wondered about the popularity of hi res on phones etc, thinking it would be pointless.
Oddly enough it’s the same with video too. A cheap $70 blue ray player looks pretty good playing a BRD but stick in a DVD and it’s blocky and nearly unwatchable. Which is because after unpacking the data it does very little processing on it. Whereas a top end Pioneer player makes an old DVD look like a slightly smoothed out HD picture.
While video and audio reconstruction share almost nothing in common, the root cause of both issues is the same; lack of additional “work” processing on the source data.
I use Qobuz (it was a gift) and usually see an infinity of unknown artists and covers flow before my eyes but never find something of interest. I am starting to suspect that I have simply heard too much music in my life and am now saturated.
Is there anyone else convinced that good music is not an infinite amount and that we simply can’t have music at our disposal 24/7/365? That audiophilia has created a creepy sort of sonic bulimia?
I certainly don’t believe good music can be is infinite - if nothing else, there are a finite number of combinations of notes possible in any given length of music, and many combinations are discordant (witness a lot of modern “pop” music…).
Thread has briefly spoken about filtering…
I think this IS a significant part of the equation when choosing formats (on respective playback equipment)…
ie most modern cheap stuff,… (DAC wise) as already mentioned, is aided by having hires, as it sounds more akin to good CD format on ‘better kit’…
Of course before the market moved to using ‘built for phone DAC chips’ and SABRE with on chip filtering that favours DSD format…
External filter chips like the PMD100 was what was evolving the sound… (CD as a 16bit format was doing ‘airy’ 20bit sound)
Nowadays I would chose the format I listen to based on DAC being used,…
A nice R2R DAC and 16bit 44khz Pulse Code Modulation is my preference (my whole collection),… but a budget part using a SABRE DAC? I would use DSD and/or an ‘on the fly’ conversion to DSD (eg Onkyo HF Player software on an Android device) to bypass poor quality PCM filters.
16bit 44khz is transparent enough to enjoy (on lovely kit), and I parrot the above comment that ‘good music’>‘good masterings’>best format.
Follow your bliss… (but know thy equipment and ITS’ preferences)
I often think of painting analogies and I think that holds quite well in this context. I see modern art I would describe as visually discordant for the sake of the artist producing something different from what has gone before. On the other hand, is there only a finite number of paintings of vases of flowers that are worth seeing?
The problem for me with new music is the volume of it and sorting the artists who are motivated by their artistic vision (and worth hearing even if not ultimately to your taste) from those who are not. Streaming services haven’t created that problem but they have probably exacerbated it.
It almost certainly won’t be from the same master. A distribution master these days may commonly be 44.1/24 48/24 or 96/24, a several variants may be created for distribution, but typically that may involve down sampling from the mix production master.
I do agree for replay 44.1/24 can be and usually is wonderful. For these days of YouTube distribution, however, 48/24 is more common, simply because of the video / sound formats used
That is Microsoft’s gift to the world and with EDGE/Bing it’s even worse - I have to rent something that is driven by advertising over user utility.
I used to have the same trouble in HMV - if I hadn’t gone in with a specific purchase in mind!