Yeah, but my point was, most of us are no longer listening to 16/44.1 CDs. We're listening to MP3, AAC, etc. If we were still listening to CDs directly, there wouldn't be an issue.
What I mean by the push for 24-bit causing an improvement indirectly is, Apple (and others) aren't stupid. They aren't going to just up the size of the sample to 24 bits and leave the sampling rate and overall quality alone. They're doing this to offer much larger files, probably 24/96 files, with either lossless compression or much less lossy compression, so they can a) sell those files for more money and b) justify folks purchasing new audio players and huge amounts of storage to store all their new shiny files. My point is therefore that 24-bit will drive an overall improvement in quality, hopefully to something greater than CD quality.
Ah, ok, that’s understandable. I would, however, be much happier about lossless music that doesn’t needlessly waste storage space. Mobile storage space is still limited, especially after everyone switched to flash memory.
(I’m personally happily buying 256 kbps AAC files. I did a blind test before I started investing money and couldn’t hear the difference. Buying and storing lossless files would be kind of pointless for me personally.)
What I mean by the push for 24-bit causing an improvement indirectly is, Apple (and others) aren't stupid. They aren't going to just up the size of the sample to 24 bits and leave the sampling rate and overall quality alone. They're doing this to offer much larger files, probably 24/96 files, with either lossless compression or much less lossy compression, so they can a) sell those files for more money and b) justify folks purchasing new audio players and huge amounts of storage to store all their new shiny files. My point is therefore that 24-bit will drive an overall improvement in quality, hopefully to something greater than CD quality.