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

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.

Well, shut ,my mouth and call me cornpone! I has no idea that there were audiophiles at NASA.

https://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/audio-designline-blog/4206458/Why-is-NASA-audio-so-bad-

Of course there are. They read diyaudio an audiogon  and pressed the agency for changes since that article above. 

I used to be on the NASA (Voice) network back in the 70s at Goddard Space Flight Center for launches at Kennedy. Trust me, the sound of voice was clear as a bell and clean as a whistle. Voice quality was required to be 5x5. Besides nobody with any sense listens to diyaudio. 10-4. 🧑🏻‍🚀