Focus on 24/192 Misguided?.....

I'm sorry Onhwy61 the referenced article is not nonsense. We are dealing with a pure digital signal until the output of the D/A. So, there are plenty of DSP techniques available to make this work without oversampling the heck out of the digital signal. We need to oversample just enough to ease the specifications of the analog reconstruction skirt so that it's not brickwall. That's where 96KHz sampling comes in.
I also bet that most people's systems (including yours & mine) do not have 96dB of dynamic range after all the sweat that we have put in to isolate & reduce noise.

If you really take the article seriously we should all be using 32kHz/12bit digital because the math works perfectly at that level too

no it does not. The Fs/2 freq would be 16KHz which would be less than 20KHz.
And, 12-b would be insufficient because one would add too much noise when going thru the mastering process & you'd effectively get 9-10 bits of music.

And what's wrong with mathematically perfect response out to 16kHz? Most people, and certainly most middle age and older audiophiles' hearing doesn't go beyond 16kHz. FM doesn't go beyond 15kHz and at its best it's pretty damn good sounding. 12bit audio has a theoretical dynamic range of 72dB. That exceeds all but the most dedicated of audiophile rooms and systems. And if you increase the sampling rate above 32kHz won't you be introducing ultrasonic IM distortion?

44.1kHz/16bit is not needed. Done!

I agree with Onhwy61 - article is a nonsense. First, motion that 16/44 is perfect if meets Nyquist criteria is first nonsense. Nyquist criteria applies only to continuous waves. Short high frequency bursts like cymbals will suffer the most of distortion. Second nonsense is that digital filter can suppress 96dB within 4kHz without any problem. There is no filter in the world, digital or analog, that can do that (no matter how many poles) with even group delays (or linear phase if you prefer). Uneven group delays will cause poor summing of harmonics (delayed differently) and change in sound. Reducing suppression won't help since low level signals above 24kHz will "fold" into audible band starting at 0Hz. Next nonsense is that ultrasonic frequency is harmful to the ear and modulate tweeter. Not only that 192kHz is WAY easier to completely filter out than 44kHz but also modulation can only happen on nonlinear element and for this to happen membrane has to move - not likely at 192kHz (even if your amp and CDP have such bandwidth). Then he claims that higher resolution does not increase dynamic range because of ambient noise floor forgetting that it is still improving resolution for louder signals. He claims that oversampling can increase resolution and sampling rate - true, but it is done with interpolated samples while 24/192 contains real samples. I agree that we might have hard time to hear better above certain resolution/rate, for instance 20/96 but claim that 24/192 is harmful is complete nonsense.

Just a little heads up on a well recorded redbook CD. I'm an old Four Seasons fan from the 60s and 70s. Just bought the CD 2005 original soundtrack of Jersey Boys and a CD redo of the original Best of the Four Seasons. The 2005 Jersey Boys CD is very nicely recorded. The original Four Seasons CD sucks. I guess the engineer who mastered the old Four seasons tunes thought everyone played their records with hand cranked turn tables and used a sowing needle for a stylus. UUuugghh.

Some DACs however will sound a lot better due to the digital filtering automatically being pushed out beyond audibility with 192. I manually control this on my DAC, so I can do it even with 44.1, and I do. Sounds a lot better than a brick-wall filter at 20kHz.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

This is exactly why 192 makes sense and why it (can) definitely sound better than Redbook...192 is way outside of the audible range of human hearing; what better "place" to apply the filtering...

There are some great articles on "pre-ringing" and jitter that address the reasons why HiRes (192 especially) has real benefits...

That said; a great Redbook recording does indeed sound...great!