Al, I wonder if 24/192 contains any ultrasonic frequency at all. Why would they leave it preparing hi-rez files? Where this ultrasonic frequency comes from? Again, notion that 192kHz sampling is harmful is a little farfetched. Do we have any studio sound engineers on our forum that could explain it to us?
Bombaywalla, Thanks for the info on filters. I'm dealing mostly with 4-tap lowpass FIR filters at work but 500-tap filter is really something. One graph shows interesting step response typical to most of CDPs with ringing appearing before and after the pulse. That might affect the sound since our ears are very sensitive to it. Stereophile posted similar test results comparing apodizing and non-apodizing filters. In comparison there is no antialias filters used in SACD creation making better, more natural step response (transients).
I do not have golden ears and like the sound of my system very much but just believe that processing back and forth 24/192=>16/44=>24/192 is not likely to improve anything. Higher sample rates are not to extend bandwidth but rather improve filter response reducing pre-echo effect. Apodizing (windowing) filters, available in few CDPs like Meridian, allow to eliminate pre-cho completely but AFAIK are not suitable for 44.1kHz because there is not enough space between 20kHz passband and first alias to fit filter's windowing function. DSP processing is not my field of expertise but even if everything looks peachy in frequency domain there is a lot to be improved, possibly by higher sampling rate, in time domain (transient response).
Audiofreak32, technical articles are to understand better what is happening but you're right, that at the end what counts is listening experience. At the level of 20/96 or 24/192 placebo (or negative placebo) effect might be a dominating factor. Just the fact that I feel good about my gear can make it sound better to me than to others.
Oldears, Choice or audibility of different formats might depend on setup. In my setup, for instance data is wirelessly delivered ALAC compressed to Airport Express and contains no timing. It is also bit perfect. Lack of timing is important because it eliminates any influence of computer processing or playback program, computer noise, etc. At this point timing is recreated in AE and data is streamed to Benchmark DAC1 with low 258ps jitter further suppressed by Benchmark processing. I could also save data in other formats but it would eat up some processing power of my computer that I use for other chores (like typing this).
