And don't get me started, but 4x should have been the fundamental lowest sampling freq of CD and all digital audio. 44K/48K is the root of most digital evil actually..
However there were sound reasons why even 44K was a stretch back in the early 80's.. But unfortunately we're stuck with it now for legacy reasons. Kind of like being stuck with all the legacy related bugs in Windoze, while they make a pile of money regardless. But I digress..
For some great tech background information see: http://www.mother-of-tone.com/cd.htm And yes, he's spot on.
If all recording were sampled at say, 8x there's no reason to have upsampling DACs and such. If I ran the world that's how it would be ;)
TK