In normal listening conditions and for most people the difference between 16/44 and 24/192 is inaudible.
Given a 5 minute song, if I have the choice to download a 11MB file (320kpbs MP3) or a 330MB file (24/192) I would of course choose the 11MB file. The sound quality is perfectly acceptable and the file size much more convenient to manage (storage, backups, etc.).
In terms of the convenience of managing the file size and sound quality I think 320kbps MP3 is the best compromise.
Here's a file size comparision of a 5 minute stereo song:
MP3 128kbps > 5 MB
MP3 320kbps > 11 MB
Uncompressed 16/44 > 50 MB
Uncompressed 24/192 > 330 MB
When talking about sound quality there is a much more relevant issue: the amplitude compression (distortion) abuse used by mastering engineers and producers that totally destroys the dynamic and life of the sound. That is a real issue. When buying a song there should be two versions to choose from:
A) "Loud", dynamically destroyed / distorted version.
But then for every 10 people like you there is 1 person who is willing to pay 20x as much so they can get a "higher fidelity" product.
For a producer and manufacturer the rational approach would be to cater to that craziness and extract as much money from it as possible. In other words if you are selling HDMI cables, spend $2/cable to make it, then sell most for $5 and then re-brand some and sell for $500. If only takes 1 out of 100 people to buying that to make the same profit. You know these people are obsessed and irrational so you cater to that. And that's basically how we end up with ridiculously overpriced Monster cables and recordings distributed to customers @ 192kHz.
Agreed, that market exists. My point is, why discuss the subtle difference between 16/44 vs 24/192 when there are far more audible and damaging practices going on in the music industry. For example, aggressive compression and brick limiting which adds distortion to achieve maximum loudness ('loudness wars').
Given a 5 minute song, if I have the choice to download a 11MB file (320kpbs MP3) or a 330MB file (24/192) I would of course choose the 11MB file. The sound quality is perfectly acceptable and the file size much more convenient to manage (storage, backups, etc.).
In terms of the convenience of managing the file size and sound quality I think 320kbps MP3 is the best compromise.
Here's a file size comparision of a 5 minute stereo song:
MP3 128kbps > 5 MB
MP3 320kbps > 11 MB
Uncompressed 16/44 > 50 MB
Uncompressed 24/192 > 330 MB
When talking about sound quality there is a much more relevant issue: the amplitude compression (distortion) abuse used by mastering engineers and producers that totally destroys the dynamic and life of the sound. That is a real issue. When buying a song there should be two versions to choose from:
A) "Loud", dynamically destroyed / distorted version.
B) Normal, dynamic, non-distorted version.
Today only version A is available to buy.