Distributing music != recording music != processing music.
There ARE good reasons for recording and processing music at higher bitrates and sample sizes. Effects, especially those with positive feedback loops, can go more unstable and clip and lose information with fewer bits and samples.
There's just no good reason to DISTRIBUTE music at the higher rates.
Don't such effects already upsample and downsample as needed internally ? You don't need to waste cpu on the effects that don't need higher sampling rate, right ?
They could. But then you get clipping effects and sampling effects when you convert back and forth.
Better to upsample once (generally a non-lossy operation) and operate on single precision FP (24-bit mantissa and an exponent) at higher sampling from that point forward and then downsample once (generally a LOSSY operation).
Distributing music != recording music != processing music.
There ARE good reasons for recording and processing music at higher bitrates and sample sizes. Effects, especially those with positive feedback loops, can go more unstable and clip and lose information with fewer bits and samples.
There's just no good reason to DISTRIBUTE music at the higher rates.
Don't such effects already upsample and downsample as needed internally ? You don't need to waste cpu on the effects that don't need higher sampling rate, right ?
They could. But then you get clipping effects and sampling effects when you convert back and forth.
Better to upsample once (generally a non-lossy operation) and operate on single precision FP (24-bit mantissa and an exponent) at higher sampling from that point forward and then downsample once (generally a LOSSY operation).