24-bit question.....

If you had a way to read out and display the 24-bit data words, you could look to see if the LSB (least significant bit) ever changes. In my work we used 16-bit data words, but some data was just measuremnts using a 12-bit A/D. In this case the lower order bits were filled with zeros, so that the data word was 16 bits, but only 12 were significant.

You can pretty much assume any recording released within the last 3 years was mastered at 24 bit resolution. If in doubt, contact the mastering house/engineer on the albums credits and ask.

Some receivers, processors, DACs, etc... out there have the ability to display what the bit rate is of the digital stream. But the format still dictates. As I understand it... a redbook CD is always only going to be 16/44, regardless of how it was recorded. So there's really no way to tell in this case. But with DVDs you could get different output rates depending on the recording and equipment.