Anything over 44.1 KHz and 16 bit is pointless (for listening). Don’t worry about it.

Those high sample rates/bit depths in DACs are pretty much a “just because we can” thing. They’ve gotten so cheap and well made that those numbers are easily achievable. Tidal with 16/44 losless is absolutely fine.

You can hit CD Quality with an Apple TV over HDMI. I use that and queue up music with a HomePod.

I have a small collection of SACDs, and some Blu Ray Audio discs.

Amazon Music. It provides not only CD quality (HD quality), but also Ultra HD quality.

I have a lot of music at higher bit rates and some DSD files. I have found these files sound better then the CD of the same album. It’s also more convenient to listen to in my car, which doesn’t have a CD player. But, but playing them off my phone gives phenomenal sound in my car. Much better than streaming services.

I have roughly 6 TB of primarily FLAC and DSD files that I play bit-perfect via foobar.

Best streams by quite a distance are analogue vinyl rips.

They are way better than any streaming service.

Use roon as an endpoint for even higher quality.

The source determines the quality of course

Most of the streaming services will offer multiple versions of an album so you can listen for yourself and see if you can hear a difference and if the difference you hear is actually better instead of just a different.

To do this right you would engage the services of a friend to switch between versions in a random fashion to see which you prefer. Since this is a royal pain in the ass no one actually does it. They just talk about doing it.

I have a variety of hi-rez sources and they all sound great. Then so does 16/44.1 so there’s that.

A truism is “Anything over xx bits and yy sample rate is beyond the capabilities of human hearing.

You can insert any numbers you want for xx and yy and start a great discussion/argument.

What we know is that studios seldomly master in anything over 24/96, unless they are using DSD aka SACD.

I have some high resolution files. Contrary to what some people claim, higher resolution can sound better than redbook CD. How does it sound better? Most obviously, high resolution files capture music’s higher harmonics which humans perceive as a noticeable increase in spatial cues, providing a sense of the acoustic space that the music was recorded in. Well recorded, high-res music sounds like you’re sharing the performance space with the performers. It’s absolutely uncanny.

Most loudspeakers don’t reproduce higher frequencies above 10KHz and as such, are simply not capable of reproducing music’s upper and lower harmonics. If you’re casually listening to music, you don’t need gear that can accurately produce the full bandwidth of music because most music only covers the frequency range from 40Hz to 10KHz. Most loudspeakers people buy rarely go beyond that frequency range. Very few speakers are capable of full range sound reproduction, no matter what specifications manufacturers claim.

Personally, I almost always buy redbook CD for most mainstream music because almost all of it is ridiculously overcompressed. Remastered reissues are sometimes worth getting if they were recorded in famous recording studio spaces. High-end audiophile labels recorded in vast concert spaces, churches, concert halls, jazz clubs and the like are ideal high-resolution purchases. When I purchase high resolution music, I prefer to purchase high-res files in 24/96 format and will buy 24/192 only when 24/96 isn’t available. Also keep in mind that high-rez music is FAR more costly. An album in 24/196 format generally runs over $45.