No I will not spare you Archimago’s measurements as an antidote to your ramblings. My own equipment: Quad 606-2 amplification, Quad 2805 electrostatic speakers, plus B&W PV1d subwoofer tamed by Antimode 8033. All of this in a large listening room.
I have listened to enough hi res recordings, as that is what many Bluray discs are as well (or 24/48 on many DVD’s). And yes they often sound very good. However, there is ample research that questions the benefits of such hi res formats, as long as these are from the same masters, even though 16/44.1 is indeed at the very margin of where there may be benefits, or not (hence 24/48 may have been a better idea, but was impossible at the time of the CD format development). The snag with listening tests is that Hi Res recordings are often from different masters with greater dynamic range, and that is where the difference comes in, and not from the format itself. That may still be a reason to go for them, of course.
But in any case, the Chromecast Audio will also do 24/96, even of that is better done with an external DAC.
I have listened to enough hi res recordings, as that is what many Bluray discs are as well (or 24/48 on many DVD’s). And yes they often sound very good. However, there is ample research that questions the benefits of such hi res formats, as long as these are from the same masters, even though 16/44.1 is indeed at the very margin of where there may be benefits, or not (hence 24/48 may have been a better idea, but was impossible at the time of the CD format development). The snag with listening tests is that Hi Res recordings are often from different masters with greater dynamic range, and that is where the difference comes in, and not from the format itself. That may still be a reason to go for them, of course.
But in any case, the Chromecast Audio will also do 24/96, even of that is better done with an external DAC.