Given that you didn't really answer the questions posed in the post you were responding to, I gather that because you like the sound of 24/96 better than 16/44.1, you are assuming that the IMD caused bvy hi-res is less damaging than the noise and THD caused by 16/44.1. Is that fair?
By the way, I don't mean to imply that audiophiles are lemming-like in their behavior at all. I never cease to find their behavior curious, but I don't think it is particualrly consistent.
Tim
I thought I did. Oh well, I guess I have to try again. My thought process doesn't anchor on IMD vs HD. My starting point is that I simply hear more from 24bit as I recorded it than the down converted version of it. That I attribute to resolution. From that point you can ask, why should the decimation make these things sound less apparent? Because parts of it are no longer there and the blanks are being filled in by approximations based on rounding or being filled out by randomizing noise (dither). They've been replaced but not exactly. Now I'm not saying this is a bad thing per se. The guitar still sounds like a guitar. The same guitar and the same guitarist at that, just not the same as the original because it isn't and that can't be debated.
Note that I am coming from an ADAC perspective like I posted earlier as in my mind the two shouldn't be considered separately because of the input Xmax, Xmin factor. Man I suck at analogies but since I am doing so poorly explaining what's in my head on this keyboard I must resort to one. You know when you're watching on a plain jane TV (720x480/30fps) and you can still tell if something was shot on film vs something shot on native NTSC? It's sort of like that. The telecine process (downconversion analogy) gives you enough information to make the judgement but you will lose detail compared to seeing the film in its original form. Now since you can still appreciate the cinematography of the film as watched on a TV and still enjoy the movie as a whole you could say the TV is sufficient/adequate and you wouldn't be wrong. What you can't say is that it is as good and definitely not say it is better if you are now in an A/B situation. The brain after all is the most powerful filter. Heck it can even make you imagine things that were never there in the first place and not just fill in the blanks.
Now imagine what we hear knowing that that whole band or orchestra playing at the same time is represented by a voltage. Imagine how small these voltage changes are that represent you, your drummer, your bassist and your vocalist at any given point in time. The components see nothing but the differences in pressure converted to changes in voltage, quantized, coded, decoded and converted back to voltage then pressure. The more accurately you can quantize the voltage level changes the better that's the common sense thing we all agree on but now
before coding we have two discreet sets of information being time and amplitude. Infinite to limited and we're filling in the blanks or rather the gear is sometimes with choices made available to the user. I have my propeller beanie on now so I'll take it off. Now I'm Jack enjoying a cold San Miguel beer on a hot night and not Jack soloing tracks with a scrunched up face because things don't sound right and I'm trying to figure out what I screwed up. Poor as my brain is at instantly figuring out what is wrong, it is great for me and everybody else at instinctively knowing when something isn't right. Again just like I can watch through that on a TV and listen through that with a decimated copy in ultimate terms that doesn't mean its as good.
As hobbyists the fun is in not settling as the process is as much a part as the results maybe that is the behavior you find curious. In all honesty I don't blame you. I laugh at myself quite a bit because of the extent at which I pursue things. Beer in hand and when everything sounds right however, all that craziness becomes worth it. It's a diversion after all.