This thread started off with an insult which was deleted. I think we can expect more.
The stair step argument is a myth. There's nothing missing between samples. It produces a continuous analog waveform that is identical to the source. You can keep repeating it and wrapping it in ever more convoluted language, but it's still wrong.
CD sound has no audible distortion. It has no timing error. With oversampling, it has every frequency humans can hear in perfect balance. It has a noise floor so low, no one would ever bump into it. It is audibly transparent.
You can't say any of that about LP records. Records are fine. I have over 10,000 of them myself. They have advantages. A lot of music only exists on records, and the covers are nicer than CD covers. But LPs are not capable of the fidelity level that CDs deliver. They are inferior on every metric. That doesn't mean they can't sound good. They just can't sound AS good.
It did not start off with an insult. It started off with me saying that 192khz was better than 96. The insult was the way that someone disagreed with me, which I refute.
Imagine playing a fast reaction video game: at the new standard 24hz for movies, someone who is a far away speck can be moving across your screen erratically. Can you get your crosshairs on him quickly and accurately? What if there were more FPS, like Bruce Lee complained about the old 29hz spec only providing? The same is true for video, with the frames per second factor already existing for it.
Explain the part where, if my cd player plays a tone sweep that takes 1 second, from 0-20khz, how does my dac ever get told when 440.75hz is getting passed through?
The clocks on your gear are nowhere near accurate enough for you to say there is no timing error. Furthermore, this factor, called jitter in digital audio, is created even in you cable's point. Nobody is talking about not playing up to 20khz frequency. Low noise floor is truly nice. I have a professional 32" 4k monitor using a higher than normal color spectrum, and have begun thinking that my streamers are providing a 4k friendly version of album covers, which I can display full screen during each track, and I have been thinking, while looking at the size being possibly slightly bigger than a 12" record now, that the detail of album covers is more apparent than when they used to be, with a 12". The higher resolution photography is really nice, sometimes I think that's just a tick of the 4k, but no, digital camera's are still getting better at the rest of the camera's job, while the resolution increases. Photo's have a medium-free factor too, same with video.
Care to explain why DSD recordings are said to sound more analogue than cd's? Even in only the original SACD resolution? Those were like 1bit, but 2.8 million samples per second, or something like that.
You guys who are complaining about how cd's can never be improved upon are trying to derail a valid thread. Fine, if you want cd's to already be perfect, why don't you go to another thread? People who don't already satisfy themselves with 128kbps mp3's don't want to listen to you complaining that higher resolution copies ruin what you already always have to be being with everyone else. You need to start your own thread where your topic is "Vote for banning discussion of higher than cd resolution on head-fi, because otherwise is insulting". Then people can decide whether or not this is the place to discuss anything besides headphones and headphone amps or not.