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Well I go back to, that's only if you're applying EQ or other special processing. If you have quality hardware and want to hear what the sound masterer intended, it can be best to not do your own processing. The point is, you don't know ahead of time what artist you want to select. You just know you're in the mood to listen to a particular genre. And within that genre, you discover the artist you want to go with. If you just browse by artist in general, you're looking at too large of a list, and everything from Classical to Rap to Whatever is mixed all together, making for a crappy list to browse.

Thanks, Andre, for the detailed explanation!! I don't think your Denon example is a good one, though, because that involves DACs and power systems. Obviously there's no limit to how good those can be. But in my application here, I'm just streaming an MP3 onto Bluetooth, and I don't want to apply any processing. I'd imagine that the digital decoding and re-encoding should follow standards, and give the identical result as any device following the MP3 and Bluetooth coding standards. On a separate topic, in my car I've been using iOS app Equalizer by Audioforge in order to flatten the response of my speakers and boost the bass. I'm blown away by how well it works. And it also doesn't support browsing by Genre->Artist, a significant disadvantage! I don't know about you, but I'm usually in the mood for a particular genre, so it makes total sense to browse artists within a desired genre.

Excuse my ignorance, but what's the point of a better audio engine? Is that only for applying EQ or DSP to the sound? In my case I'm just playing MP3s and sending it over Bluetooth, with no extra processing, so it would seem that standard methods should work perfectly.

foobar2000 on the Play store is AWESOME! Thanks so much, MotleyG. The UI is instantaneous, it's simple, it scanned my >10k files in only about a minute, and it lets you browse by Genre/Artist/Album/Song.

I registered just to post that I find it absolutely ridiculous that this common sense, basic feature is absent! My original Creative Nomad let me browse by Genre/Artist/Album/Song, and at the top of each list was a "play all". It was simple and brilliant. Why is this so hard to come by in any app.