I always bind Shift+Space to play animations when possible
Yeah, that could work! There is a small chance that would still interrupt typing into filter for some, but perhaps it is negligeable for the convenience. Maybe Ctrl + Space could be a workaround. There is also the issue that Shift + Enter is right now used as a counterpart to force-stop playback. So a different counterpart would be needed if Shift + Space is for playing.
I mainly wanted the play button to be easy to hit, so you can spam it to preview the SFX. But holding a modifier key is not a big deal overall.