MUSINGS: Is CD sound quality (16/44 PCM) good enough?
Personally, up to now I have not been able to ABX a difference between properly dithered 16/44 and the 24/96 source. Others have also done some fantastic testing around this like Mitchco at Computer Audiophile with different test methodologies.
It has been 30 years since the introduction of the CD (PCM 16/44) standard for mass consumption. The fact that we have not seen good controlled tests to show that 16/44 is somehow "lacking" (when listening to music at normal volumes) compared to 24/96+ or SACD tells me that 16/44 is most likely good for any circumstance. Much debate for example was sparked in 2007 by Meyer & Moran when they published their report based on work with the Boston Audio Society when listeners could not detect a significant difference between hi-res (DVD-A and SACD) analogue output versus the output from a 16/44 A/D/A loop.
Knowing the above, reading stuff like this should make an unsuspecting audiophile wonder why the inferiority of 16/44 wasn't proven ages ago! The author writes: "For me its clear that 24/96, 24/192 and DSD are superior to 16/44.1 in many meaningful ways..." Really?
The only rational issue I have come across "against" the 44kHz sampling rate is that with older DACs, the Nyquist frequency at 22kHz is too close to the potentially audible 20kHz upper range and the steep "brickwall" filter may cause audible effects. But this issue was addressed with upsampling and slower roll-off filters long ago (I know... yet another contentious issue for some).
continua -> http://archimago.blogspot.ca/2013/07/musings-is-cd-sound-quality-1644-pcm.html
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One more thing... There is one situation where you'd definitely want to either upsample or run a higher sampling rate - if you're using a NOS DAC. However, this is more to do with reducing aliasing distortion in the audible spectrum.
