Question about using DVD player

My Pioneer PD-75 CD needs service to realign the laser. While it's gone, I thought I'd play my redbook CDs on my Pioneer 340 DVD player. But I need your help.

Instruction manual says it plays CDs (and DVD-video but not DVD-Audio). Manual says the player is capable of outputting digital signals with a sampling frequency of 96kHz PROVIDED "you have made connections to a component capable of processing this signal rate". I will be running the DVD player to my Audible Illusions preamp. What do I need to add to my system, if anything, to achieve the higher sampling rate? Will the audio improvement be worth the expense of this additional component? If not, I'll just use in the 48kHz mode until my CD player is repaired.