Mike, I've made the point about the complete sufficiency of the 16/44.1 CD format as far as actual audibility goes quite a few times here in the past few years. First, there was what appeared to me to be fairly obvious in that a 22.05KHz frequency limit exceeded human needs and a 98dB(6.02n + 1.76dB)maximum dynamic range exceeded the most dynamic recordings, which at most have about a 70dB range. Then, I also cited the explanation given on the S&V board by "Soundhound", a very experienced movie music engineering editor, who detailed how while using higher bit depth and sampling rates was fine to give room during the recording process, reducing this to 16/44.1 in the actual end product made no audible difference in his tests.
The recent tests confirming this that I referred to were published in a paper in the September AES Journal. The Journal isn't available online,but
here's a brief description and discussion of the tests by the editor of the Audio Critic(an engineer). In brief, when DVD-A or SACD material was run through a 16/44/1 A/D/A to limit it to 16/44.1 no difference was detected in the blind testing. Any superior production values that resulted in better sound on the DVD-As or SACDs were unrelated to higher sampling and/or bit rates in the actual end product that was listened to.
