George - you have a very fundamental misunderstanding of Nyquist and the sample rate. 48kHz indicates the analog signal is sampled 48,000 times per second (at Soundstream, we used 50kHz). Nyquist then says at 48,0000 times per second, 24kHz would be the highest frequency you can accurately resolve (prior to folding and other stuff ... note, I am keeping this in very simple terms). In actual practice, the implementation of the filters and the conversion back to analog also enter into sound quality.

What is magic about a 96kHz sample rate? The real magic is it is an exact multiple of a 48kHz sample rate. Makes life really easy for up/down conversion, etc. In fact, the primary reason was the fact that 96kHz is an exact multiple of 48kHz...what audio (or movie track) would have high frequency content at 48kHz? Rather outside the range of human perception. Now, there is a suggestion that "taking a picture" of the analog signal more frequently (say 96000 times per second) would allow a more accurate reconstruction of the original analog signal. Clearly, more is better, yes? That baits the question of exactly what sample rate is needed to reconstruct the analog signal in such a manner that the reconstructed signal is audibly identical to the original. All of this is before any consideration is given to the word length! 16bit? 20 bit? 24 bit? What are the differences between 16 bit 96 and 24 bit 48? The body of research in this area is a real high stack of papers and not fully conclusive. And, not fully conclusive since the "audible" word keeps coming into the picture and "audible" has so many components to it. Not the least of which is the horrid, terrible, mythological, misunderstood, folklore nonsense that permeates this field (usually by self professed professional lay people). (Resulting many being happy with poor quality sound, horrid acoustic environments in listening rooms, and sound engineers mixing tracks in noisy little rooms using nearfield monitors and absolutely refusing to mix to any base standard and therefore preventing anyone from properly setting up their music listening environment.) And, let's not forget the green felt tip markers.

I would refer you to http://www.Meridian-audio.com/w_paper/Coding2.PDF which was done roughly in the 1996 time period. The AES library is full of subsequent data on these topics for those interested.

Last edited by DErskine; 2010-12-14 09:21. Reason: Added reference
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