🚀 go-pugleaf

@ steveG - of course you are correct about the dynamic range of vinyl, which isn't even close to the (theoretical) 96dB of CD, but how many converters running at 16 bit actually give 16 bit performance?

To my mind, using the 24 bit word and the 96KHz converters will give better performance as the Brickwall filtering in a 44.1KHz converter is not going to be as good as a well designed 96KHz converter. Okay, a properly designed 44.1KHz converter would be a good thing, but most are not well designed & use cheap & nasty components.
But I digress.

Where the adbantages come in at 24/96 (and in a blind test even my bank manager can tell the difference between a vinyl recovery done at 16/44.1 on CD and the same album left in 24/96 on DVD-A) is that you are using a far, far higher resolution.
16 bit audio has a possible 65,536 states, or values. 24 bit raises this massively to around 16,777,216 values. And the 96KHz sample rate ensures accurate & complete conversion. Let's be honest here - with most CD these days, the brickwall limiting does bad things, and it then gets compounded with the brickwall filtering used in the DAC to prevent aliasing. There has been a lot of work done by people such as Dr. Stanley Lipshitz and others who now think that nyquist is not the whole story, and to accurately capture a 20KHz signal you need a 60KHz sample rate, not 40KHz. The AES also suggested, a while back now, that 65KHz would be an ideal sampling rate to deal with the upper harmonics in music.
But I'm rambling now.

The main problem with CD is that most of the people mastering them these days do not have the first clue how to do the job properly. Anything that gets rammed through things like Waves L1/L2/L3 or a finalizer, maximizer or any other -izer is going to drastically reduce
A/. the quality of the resulting Audio, and
B/. the dynamic range of the audio.
If mastering houses would do the job so as to not chop off the top of the waveforms when imported back into a DAW, then things would definitely sound a lot better. The insane competition for ever louder pressings is madness - you cannot fight broadcast compressors so why try? Do the audio properly in the first place - concentyrate on quality over volume, and if it needs to be louder, turn up the amplifier!

But I am rambling on again. Sorry.

Back to DVD-Audio and 24/96 resolution.
Following the source quality rules, it makes sense to capture and digitize to the highest possible quality. That way, any further processing carried out on the Audio will also be at the highest quality. Only ever drop down to 16/44.1 at the last possible minute.
Then burn.
Whilst you are there, burn a DVD-A with the unreduced, undithered 24/96 audio - and then you will hear the difference for yourself. I'm still certain the 24/96 is superior quality. What DVD-A gives us is studio quality audio on release.
Can I give you a parallel?
HD Video - is it better quality than SD video is?
What is better - capturing your video in MPEG-2 format, or AVI?

And still I keep reading the following myths:
1/. MP3 is indistinguishable from PCM
2/. DVD-A is not any better than CD

Would anyone even try to tell me that MPEG-2 is indistinguishable from AVI? or attempt to convince me that HD video at 720 or 1080i is not better than SD video?
Probably not - so why oh why do we accept the exact same arguments over Audio?