Mike, did you actually read that link that John sent? It seems pretty clear. There are a lot of other benefits to SACD/DVD-A (I'm not getting into the Blu-Ray HDDVD thing here) than just higher resolution/bitrate audio. Plus, they were talking about ideal conditions, if I read that right, which makes John somewhat incorrect; or at least makes his statement misleading.
It should also be pointed out that more bits and a higher sampling rate in recording are still a good thing because they permit a little bit of unavoidable sloppiness, so that you can still comfortably end up with 16-bit dynamics and 20 kHz bandwidth. Meyer and Moran do not say that 14 or 15 bits in a truncated CD are just as good as 20. What they say is that spot-on 16-bit/44.1-kHz processing is as good as it gets, audibly.
Glad you enjoy it. I do too.
