> there would not be much of a difference.
The fun poking is mostly about things like 192kHz sample rates and thousand dollar power cables. It's uncontroversial that people can hear mp3 artifacts.
48kHz and 24bits is what most audio is recorded at nowadays, then downsampled with aliasing for CD quality audio.
I don't really understand this, but I guess what it means is that the first sample of a digital signal gets from some place to some other place a ninety-six thousandth of a second more quickly. I'm not sure why that would matter. It's the time it takes sound to travel 4mm, which seems inconsequential, and the overall shape will be the same phase.
In many cases (like, if there's a computer involved anywhere), a high sample rate means you need higher latency to avoid the risk of underruns.
Also, if the sound processors are performing calculations in the idle time between samples (like calculating FIR filters or something like that) or in the idle processor time remaining after processing the sample, a higher sample rate will mean the calculation gets done faster (and is therefore audible faster). Else you'd change a setting and wait to hear it (and it would be noticeable perhaps), I guess?
Then a ninety-six thousandth of a second's worth of latency seems pretty irrelevant? Even if you were decreasing the latency by using a higher sample rate, which you aren't.
The signal coming out of a FIR filter will come out at the same time whatever the sampling rate. I guess it's conceivable, if you have no buffering whatsoever, that the very first sample will come out slightly quicker, but that is honestly irrelevant. The overall signal will have the same timing at either sample rate. Unless you've had to introduce more latency to cope with the demands of the higher sample rate.