Well this will be controversial for sure. I see Boleary is impressed with Marianne Thorsen's Mozart violin concertos and I agree they are superb but they are not Linn recordings they are from 2L in Norway and resold by Linn. 2L are fantatical about sound quality and all the 2L downloads I have are superb. Now to be controversial - Linn recordings are very good but those I have listened to so far (and certainly a limited number) are not the best sound quality I have heard on my system. I downloaded from the Linn site test tracks "All My Sins" and "Love is Real" in 16/44 and 24/88 to check the difference in sound quality using 9y-4. Well I listened to them and I have to say I was disappointed in the recording quality. Now don't get me wrong they are good but I can hear clearly at higher sound levels shhhh distortion on female vocals. I think (not sure though) that the 24/88 are slightly better (than 16/44 upsampled to 88 with arc perdiction) but not in any important way with that material. So then I put on Carol Kidd "The Night We Called It A day" a Linn recording of course and it sounds superb. But even then and being fastidious at higher sound levels some schhh on female vocal. OK OK maybe I am being picky it is after all a Superb recording.

But then I put on my all time 16/44 sound quality reference recording "Jazz Me" put together with fanatical care and attention to sound quality by Dick Olsher and sung by is lovely wife Lesley. No trace of schhhh on vocals and just soooo relaxing to listen to. All the natural ambience is retained in this recording it is an absolute gem. Perhaps it is not realistic to expect a larger company like Linn to be able to produce recordings of this extreme quality but Linn are still one of the best of the rest.

There are other recordings that on my system anyway are extremely special sound quality  -  they are 24/96 recordings downloaded from the iTrax site. Another small company that is fanatical about sound recording quality and has superb music for me anyway. At the moment I am listening to "Blues Head" "That Woman She's Gone" and it is superlative just so smooth and relaxing to listen to  -  there is no hint of shhh on vocals. But the one thing these iTrax downloads have that I have not heard on any other recordings is the dynamic range - sitting there listening suddenly you will hear a plucked string or similar and it takes your breath away just so realistic. Also (and strange maybe) listening in another room it really does strike you how good the dynamics are.

I can't make a side by side comparison of the highest quality recordings in 16/44 and 24/96 but 24/96 sounds really special to me provided always that the quality of the recording is of the highest order  -  to my ears anyway it is only then that it is worth going for 24/96. By the way my DAC will only go to 18 bits but it is OK up to 96 and has no filtering at all.

A few months ago I could not have heard these differences and it was only when I got engine#3 and 9y-4 working on my system that I can sit back and be very picky.

All the best

P