I think the cheeky way Amir posed the question implicitly acknowledges that the question can’t be answered yes or no without qualification.
On balance, I think the focus on minute differences in signal transmission technologies are at best a mild salve for the anxiety of trying to create a good music playback experience.
I agree that there are sound arguments for higher sample rate and bit depth recording on the production side, within reason.
In the playback side, whatever psychological benefit this brings comes at a cost.
It is in fact hard to have a good music listening experience if one has high expectations for sound quality and musical expression.
There are a myriad of reasons for this, but whether sample rate is 44.1 or 96khz, or whether this amp has .001 THD vs that other with a mere .01 are not among them!
On the question of hires audio as is being discussed here, it’s like being worried about whether the hasta in the front yard is getting enough water when the house is burning down.
We’re talking about music, which isn’t on the same level as climate change debates, or alternative medicine trends.
But to the extent it matters, a bigger contribution to the preservation of valuable cultural legacies would be the adoption of a trustable metadata system that would give the listener clear information about what version of a particular song they are hearing. I tried to do a quick ab of song on Tidal vs Spotify the other day, and the mixes were totally different. I liked the Spotify version a lot more, so the resolution is irrelevant.
High quality remasters of classic albums would be vastly more “impactful” than allegedly hires versions.
Having attention brought to the ongoing loss of actual musicians in the world would easily justify living with 320 kbit mp3 forever.
Even though I love the resource, my guess is a site like ASR is ironically reinforcing a subjectivist mindset. By focusing on measuring differences that aren’t audible, listeners are misdirected from the actual cause of whatever deficiencies they perceive in their music playback experience, ultimately getting confused by the ever shifting experience of listening.
I’m always bemused by the argument that digital recording is better than analog because of the vastly superior dynamic range. I used to record on analog tape and it was a superior recording medium in a lot of ways because of the dynamic range compression it has.
Decent audio gear and digital recording will actually capture and playback the electric signal generated by a mic faithfully. And in most cases this is not what you want! Recording on digital mediums requires the substitution of other forms of compression.
Dynamic range in music is paradoxical. If we had super high dynamic range recording and playback systems, we’d have to put limiters in the chain to make it a meaningful musical experience for all but a very niche type of music and recording.
Even then, you would need a very quiet room to enjoy it, and playback levels on par with the original signal.
The communication of the perceptual dynamic range of a live performance requires dynamic range compression on a playback system.
There is a lot involved in the activity of recording and listening to music, but the most important thing to me is expression.
The resolution of the current audio recording system as a whole from a technical point of view is good enough. There are more fruitful avenues of improvements to be pursued, at lower cost.