24 bit/44.1?

Dseanm - It has more to do with the type of converter than number of bits. Dac in your Monarchy (PCM63 - now discontinued) is traditional DAC with laser trimmed resistor divider while most of 24/192 DACs (if not all) are Delta-Sigma. There is nothing wrong wit either approach - just different sound. Some people believe that Delta-Sigma is bad for audio and you can even find statement that Burr-Brown placed in the PCM63 datasheet saying that Delta-sigma are so noisy that they cannot even read lower three bits. Same company short time after made PCM1794 That has 6 highest bits of tradditional DAC and 18 lowest bits of Delta-Sigma. It is funny that they don't use word Delta-Sigma but "Advanced Segmented" instead. There is nothing wrong with Delta-Sigma and even SACD is byproduct of Delta-Sigma modulator before filtering. Same for DSD recording. Like everything else it is subjective and in your case you're not a fan of Delta-Sigma technology (or high oversampling, or digital filtering).