Here's a really good papaer from Meridian
http://www.meridian-audio.com/w_paper/Coding2.PDF
The summary is that redbook CD can produce very good quality sound when done properly (with correct dithering in particular). The problem is not redbook CD, but rather, poor implementation of redbook CD. This stacks up with my personal experience that really well recorded CDs sound phenomenal ... much better than average LPs. It's the engineering that counts more than the medium.
In addition it is not necessary to have more than 20 bits per sample (120dB dynamic range) since there is presently no audio amplifier capable of greater than 120dB dynamic range ... more bits would simply encode noise.
The reason 24 bits are chosen is because most commercial DSPs (signal processors) accept a 24 bit wordlength, and if the source is limited to 20 bits the 4 extra bits make the sample manipulation very much simpler (no overflow).
As for sampling rate 44.1kHz is only problematic in as much as the anti-aliasing filter causes either phase or amplitude distortion. Notice that some DACs are filterless (Audio-Note) to try to remedy this. Sampling above 96kHz has no benefits for 20 bit PCM.
So if the absolute optimum is 20bit*96kHz you could argue that redbook only gives 36% of the total info. However, in practise it probably delivers more than 95% of the useful information.
http://www.meridian-audio.com/w_paper/Coding2.PDF
The summary is that redbook CD can produce very good quality sound when done properly (with correct dithering in particular). The problem is not redbook CD, but rather, poor implementation of redbook CD. This stacks up with my personal experience that really well recorded CDs sound phenomenal ... much better than average LPs. It's the engineering that counts more than the medium.
In addition it is not necessary to have more than 20 bits per sample (120dB dynamic range) since there is presently no audio amplifier capable of greater than 120dB dynamic range ... more bits would simply encode noise.
The reason 24 bits are chosen is because most commercial DSPs (signal processors) accept a 24 bit wordlength, and if the source is limited to 20 bits the 4 extra bits make the sample manipulation very much simpler (no overflow).
As for sampling rate 44.1kHz is only problematic in as much as the anti-aliasing filter causes either phase or amplitude distortion. Notice that some DACs are filterless (Audio-Note) to try to remedy this. Sampling above 96kHz has no benefits for 20 bit PCM.
So if the absolute optimum is 20bit*96kHz you could argue that redbook only gives 36% of the total info. However, in practise it probably delivers more than 95% of the useful information.