Do we really need anything greater than 24/96? Opinions?

All I have to say is, I’ll get rid of my vinyl LPs when digital media gets to 128 bit, 4.4 MHz. That’s when the resolution/sampling approaches the infinite resolution of analog, with its zero samples/second music information.

I will just assume you were making a joke wolfie62 ....

Joke or no joke, Messieurs Nyquist, Shannon and Monty comment like this:

The most common misconception is that sampling is fundamentally rough and lossy. A sampled signal is often depicted as a jagged, hard-cornered stair-step facsimile of the original perfectly smooth waveform. If this is how you envision sampling working, you may believe that the faster the sampling rate (and more bits per sample), the finer the stair-step and the closer the approximation will be. The digital signal would sound closer and closer to the original analog signal as sampling rate approaches infinity.

However, the truth is:

All signals with content entirely below the Nyquist frequency (half the sampling rate) are captured perfectly and completely by sampling; an infinite sampling rate is not required. Sampling doesn’t affect frequency response or phase. The analog signal can be reconstructed losslessly, smoothly, and with the exact timing of the original analog signal.

The reason why The Industry kept increasing the bit rate and sampling rate is largely due to the simple fact that stock off-the-shelf untreated Redbook CDs 💿 played on stock untreated CD players sounded thin, harsh, two dimensional, bland, irritating, flat, unemotional, unnatural, boomy, screechy, and like papier-mâché. These severe issues with sound quality were not (rpt not) helped much by increasing bit rate and sampling rate, unfortunately, for the reasons I list below, I.e., the SYSTEM wasn’t good enough.  For obvious reasons, the incessant releases of remastered CDs didn’t help much with sound quality either, I.e., Dynamic Range over-compression.

Let’s review the most prominent things that affect CD system sound quality, shall we? Room acoustics, power cords, vibration isolation, resonance control of the player, resonance control of the CD, aftermarket fuses, wire directionality 🔛 and reduction of scattered laser light interference. You could say it was the Tweakers vs The Industry.

All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty back together again. 🥚

I think wire directionality is key. It influences the entropy of the data and can easily corrupt it. That's why NASA orders expensive directional cables for their infrastructure. Also power cords are important. Get the best possible, cannot be too thin: 
https://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/super-cable-2.jpg
The fuses- books can be written about them. Gold reference fuses are the minimum. The least important is the room acoustics, this can be easily improved with the carpet in front of the speakers.