Henry, I think that probably accounts for any difference. If they took the care to preserve 24/96 they also took the care to get other things right.
Now, how does that apply to something like the Stones releases that were re-mastered to 24/96 (or even 192) after the fact? My first instinct is that like upconverting a DVD on a BluRay player, it's not the same as an original release, and thus not worth the money (even if I did like the Stones).
Alan, I've never listened to a setup where surround music is better than stereo. This is mostly due to the center channels never being quite the same quality as the mains (not the case with a VP180, of course). And since I chose to go with a smaller center (due to both space in this room and cost) I'm afraid to even try because it'll just make me start wanting to upgrade and spend more.
My pre-amps are too old to handle most of that encoding anyway. But I'm OK with that because they sound great for music and the money I've saved by not replacing them has outfitted the rest of my house with distributed A/V. I'm sure I could do better, but for now I'm happily ignorant.
Fedex delayed my shipment by a day, which totally ruined my day. Why do the one day delays always happen on Friday, turning it into a 3 day delay? Bah.
