There are a number of schools of thought on this one.Â  Steve Jobs, Neil Young, and George Massenburg all have said at some point in their careers that they envision a future where all audio is delivered as 24-bit, 96khz audio.Â  And yet some big digital audio guys say this is ridiculous and a waste of time and storage.Â  The primary argument for using it is that when doing signal processing â€œin the boxâ€ on a computer, the noise and distortion caused by digital signal processing will be at a frequency far above the range of human ears, resulting in a cleaner audible signal.Â  This may be true, but itâ€s slightly debatable â€“ a lot of ITB software either already does whatâ€s known as â€œoversamplingâ€ to handle this problem at lower sampling rates, and some software doesnâ€t behave entirely predictably at high sample rates (while a lot of it does, youâ€d be best knowing what will and wonâ€t work correctly).Â  Additionally, some hardware may or may not function as well at these high sample rates.Â  And finally, if you deliver this stuff to someone who doesnâ€t use these higher rates, youâ€ll be forced to downsample, and not every sample rate converter is created equal.
So itâ€s kind of a provisional â€œmaybeâ€ â€“ if youâ€ve got the disk space, and youâ€ve got gear that you know works well at these sampling rates, and you can convert without problem, and youâ€re convinced you can hear the difference and it works for you, thenâ€¦well, go for it.