There is and continues to be a lot of confusion on this thread about certain concepts, but I also do appreciate that there are also some people here with a huge depth of knowledge far in excess of my own.
Let me translate the above conversation... see if this makes more sense to you...
I said: from a *purely technical standpoint* a car that goes 200 mph is faster than a car that can only go 100 mph and this is a fact which is beyond dispute.
I also said that just because a car can go 200 mph does not mean that you would or should drive it at that speed. People seem to be confused by the idea that if a car can go 200 mph they are obligated to drive it at 200 mph, that is a major misunderstanding -- and is basically what prompted me to attempt to add some clarity to this thread. (I did not realize my reply would go at the very end of the conversation instead of following the post to which I was specifically replying; why does this forum have a reply button on each message if the reply does not get associated with that message).
I attempted to point out that some people buy cars that go 200 mph because even at much lower speeds they find that the car is more responsive and peppy with smoother acceleration even when operating at the lower speeds.
----------
Xnor responded to my comments by saying that his car preforms very well when going 100 mph, but if he tries to go 200 mph his tires are not up to the task and he ends up in a ditch. He then concluded that nobody should drive at 200 mph because it will actually be slower than driving at 100 mph. He then tried to extend this reasoning to all cars. He further argued that since you are not allowed to go that fast it is pointless to use a car that can.
I concede this point to xnor, that if you end up in a ditch and have to wait for the tow truck then certainly you will not see a net gain in performance by driving at 200 mph because certainly waiting for the tow truck to come, will take a lot more time than if you had proceeded at 100 mph. e.g. the distortion will kill you.
Further I think he makes a very good point that a lot of the low quality results people complain about is the result of equipment that does not live up to it's specs and does not actually deliver quality performance at 200 mph. But I also contend that some cars are designed better and those cars do deliver quality at 200 mph.
However, we all agree that the actual legal speed limit is 60 mph, so nobody is actually going to be driving faster than 60 mph, although there is a lot of debate about the fact that in some places such as the Nevada freeway it is legal to drive at 80 mph (or so I've heard).
But this does not change the fact that a car which has more capacity, is going to be more responsive even when driven at a slower speed. and this might just be enough of a difference that some people will want to pay for that extra measure of quality even though it does not change the fact that you are still only going to get there at 60 mph, the ride just feels a little bit smoother... and some people appreciate this difference.
I would even agree that the law of diminishing returns is such that the additional performance difference which results from the extra capacity of a 200 mph car versus the extra capacity of a 100 mph car is likely to be quite small - when both are being driven at 60 mph; but I do not accept that the difference is zero, which is what many people contend.
However, I concede that by the time you down sample to 44.1 CD, it's probable that the *effective* difference is zero. On the other hand if your target is Blu-ray you do not have to degrade your final mix. Whether or not someone's stereo+ears can actually discern the difference is indeterminate. But one should not be too quick to dismiss the psychological satisfaction that people get from having the *best* quality specs, because that satisfaction can also be a part of the total experience, otherwise why would people put so much effort into case design? which has no impact on the sound at all, but does contribute greatly to the total experience.
A similar technical argument applies to the 24 bit versus 16 bit. At 24 bits your step size is smaller, your transitions are smoother. Is this a difference that anyone can actually hear? that remains an open question, but one thing is certain, at 16 bits it takes effort to avoid clipping, but at 24 bits, it is pretty much a no-brainer that you can both avoid clipping and retain smooth gradations.
For an experiment, find an example photo to view, and set your color mode for 16 bit, now set your color mode for 24 bit, can you tell the difference? Answer: Only if you have a high quality monitor and good visual acuity and the photo itself encompasses a wide gamut. Many monitors are not of high enough quality that they can display the difference. Many peoples eyes are not sufficiently skilled (yes color perception can be learned) that they can discern the difference (which is why monitor manufactures get away with lower quality displays while claiming to be 24 bit).
One final thought, I have also seen a lot of comments expressing concern for the amount of disk space required... once again I think there is some confusion about this issue. We now live in an era of one terabyte disk drives which can be purchased for less than $100. This means that a gigabyte now costs ten cents. One gigabyte will hold about ten hours of 24 bit stereo at 192k samples per sec of uncompressed audio (this figure is conservative, it will actually hold more). Or in other words, the recording will cost you about one penny per hour for storage (five cents if you keep proper backups). Anybody who feels that this is too expensive.... er, well, I rest my case.
(update: I was half-asleep when I wrote this and got the calculation wrong, the correct amount for 192k is 60 cents per hour if you save it to DVD with 2 backups, see the correction in the message below. At 96k your cost savings would be 50% or 30 cents per hour. If either of those amounts is a worry to you then this cost is the least of your concerns).
-------------
I probably never should have waded into this conversation, I see that it has already gone on for years and nearly 1000 comments (I've read about half), with nothing much appearing to be resolved. It was just that I saw some major confusion happening in a lot of the comments and mistakenly thought that I might be able to add something of value here. But I see that my notion was foolish and am now going to bow out as gracefully as I can manage.
For optimal productivity, I highly recommend reading
http://xkcd.com it makes more sense than does further discourse on this thread.