Hey Flecko - I think we agree good recording is the starting point if you don't have that you don't have anything.
Yep
But I don't think down sampling from say 24 96 to 16 44 can be saved by dither because the problem is that aliasing images appear within the audio band and the only way to remove them is with a brick wall filter. And any brick wall filter has to be a very "bad thing". So transferring direct to 16 44 has to be much better for sound quality. Maybe I have missed something but I don't understand why a recording studio would ever consider down sampling from a hi res master surely it has to be easier to create a 16 44 master for CD duplication and if a hi res master is required then create that in parallel at the same time.
I am not in the theoretical deatils of this but one reson to record in a higher resolution is to have some headroom for editing of the recorded material. I think it is very unlikely that you will have a record and you can put it as it is on a CD. You will have to at least match the volume of the intruments, do slight equalization and maybe add some reverb. If you are not recording some classical music. This is not bad at all and if done right a good thing. If you do this with a higher resolution and bandwidth, there will be less alteration of the 16 44 file in the end.