Now I have nothing against T Bone Burnett's skills as producer/arranger/guitarist, and a lot of what he says in this month's Word is impossible to disagree with, but... (and you saw that coming)

...All that stuff about 'as we walk down the street we're hearing up to 60-80,000' is a load of guff, and Mr.B should know better. Only children and dogs can hear over 20,000 cycles, most adult humans can hear nothing above 16,000 or so. (I know a lot of 'pro' stuff is recording at 96khz or even double that, but that's for other reasons...)

What Mr.B should be going on about instead is DYNAMIC RANGE. The 16bit range of 'loudness' of a CD equated to only 96dB (65,536 discrete steps), where 24bit has a range of 144dB (16,777,216 steps), which is 256 times better. (DVD-A uses 24bit I think, HDCD is 20bit)

So if this is what T Bone is on about, then he's right, otherwise he is barking up the wrong tree.

(Suggested reading: 'Mastering Audio' by Bob Katz)