You do not understand enough about digital and what happens with processing.
I understand that things very well. But for many users (and me including), they don’t really matter. It is simply fact that not
everyone that buys a SQ does that because of the (at least postulated) very low latency or finbe high frequency responses. Some of them
even use 48 kHz AR/AB Stageboxes and are perfectly happy with that. Some even have 16 kHz Low Pass filters or Shelves on their Master Bus.
They simply care about about what they want to produce, not about sampling Frequencies.
Most users compare Mixers due to Criteria that matters for them. That even may not be any sound parameter
but the housing color, the weight, the preference of their dealer or their favourite brand. If that matters for them,
it is what they should care about and it is what they should compare.
But also the technical argument is way less clear than you insist.
There are a lot of experienced and professional Engineers out there that clearly say 96 kHz does not make anything better most of the time
because there is simply no signal source and no signal target that can make use of the additional Data and the
noise floor off the algorithms is way low enough for most purposes anyway. And they have points. Just try to name 5 common
Samplers that deliver more than 48 kHz or 5 common stage Microphones that can be used over 20 kHz - you will see that is
not easy. Even some professional Amps and speaker Management systems have a steep 22 kHz Low Pass on their inputs.
If you detect a special 96 kHz Console sounds better than a special 48 kHz one, that might or might not be due to the
sampling frequency. That is, because it is practically nearly impossible to make such a comparison without psychological Biases
and because there are many other things influencing what you hear - Many “differences” reported out there are for sure due to
some different calibrations of used D/A-Converter (even in different Modes for 48 and 96 kHz that may be different), the following
analogue Amp stages and of course the Loudspeakers/Headphones (that are always the by far weakest part of the Chain when it comes to exact
reproduction).
Only one thing is absolutely clear: 96 kHz means to process twice the data volume of 48 kHz. That may reduce number of
available Channels (like it does even on SQ Drive Multitrack Recording), it may make the system to respond less fast,
eat DSP power, consume disk space and so on. That might make the Console more expensive (it not necessarily has to,
that is mainly a question of FPGA Market price structures and politics at the end of the day).
A&H says, 96 kHz help reducing latency. That can matter in some situations, it cannot in some other. If you filter
20 kHz, the latency Argument can be correct. If you filter 100 hz, it cannot because your period is 100 ms and there is
absolutely no way to extrapolate periods longer than 4 times of the available Data that makes sense in any form.
You say, 96 kHz even reduces processing noise. That may be but there are rare cases that noise does really matter. Most of the
time, you have 100 and more times higher noise levels from your preamps, microphones and even ambience. And even processing noise may
be reduced as well by dedicated oversampling instead of generally higher sampling rates for many use cases.
And that statement also was mentioned in the forum earlier: There were tons of really good Audio material produced with
less than 96 kHz over decades, many of it absolutely rocking the planet. If any result doesn’t, that nearly sure is not
due to the sampling frequency of the mixer.
