Upsampling - but seriously folks

phil9624,
maybe one day your moniker will be phil9632 when you switch over to 32-b upsampling? Just kidding.... ;-)
i don’t think anyone's going to laugh at you for
* using a stop-light pen
* or for thinking that cables make a big difference

many of us here have had similar experiences with both above items. Mostly, if it works for you, continue to use it. State your opinion & don’t try to convert anyone else. I’ve seen "fights" break out when some people try to convert others into their line of thinking or try to force a particular tweak down others' throats.
In the one particular case in my personal experience, the Wadia 861SE, i also very much like their 24/96 upsampling implementation. I cannot say that for every 24/96 or 24/192 implementation I’ve heard.

no problem phil9624. :-)

but actually downsampled some 192/24 FLAC Neil Young albums from PONO to 96/24 WAV and think it sounds better, also smaller file. Go figure! Best, Phil

it's not entirely surprising. As you know, the fold-over frequency for 192K is 96K & your digital stream is incoming at 192K. The circuits involved in handling this digital stream & the corresponding analog circuits need to have 2X the bandwidth (compared to a 24/96 data stream). So, the real question is: in your electronics, were the circuits designed for higher bandwidth? If not, it is quite possible that the circuits are distorting & even tho' the 24/192 might be cleaner/better sonically, the circuits are unable to render this correctly.
Dan Lavry (manuf of Lavry DACs. Lavry DACs are well regarded in the audiophile world) wrote a pretty nice white paper on this:

http://www.lavryengineering.com/pdfs/lavry-white-paper-the_optimal_sample_rate_for_quality_audio.pdf

and here is another white paper on Sampling Theory (which i think you know well w/ your Physics degree) which touches upon the pros & cons of 192KHz upsampling:

http://lavryengineering.com/pdfs/lavry-sampling-theory.pdf

It seems pretty simple - try it and see what you think. On some systems it helps, on some systems it hurts and on some system there is not difference. People can write all they want about the theory of this, it all comes down to the implementation of the upsampling and the implementation of the DAC and other components. There is no answer - other than to try it and see how it works for you.

dtc, 

That is very well said. 

J. :)