Soooo many choices.

loren personally I'd forget i heard anything about rates. if you digitize your plain old cd its 16/44. if you download some high definition stuff its mostly 24/96 with some 24/192. not sure any even is selling any 32 bit stuff, same with DSD. if you have 16/44 material and upsample (which puts bits in where there are none, using some algorithm, it will use up more storage space and may not sound much different. I have 2gb of music and none of it is beyond 16/44. im waiting for the wonder 64 bit system personally. that one will cook your breakfast in the morning as well.

I did what someone above suggested. my local dealer had my speakers (I was going to bring them anyway) and i had him put on his cheapest decent amp and let it fly. I had the ayre qb9 added to provide a "high end" dac for comparison. Not perfect bu you can drive yourself crazy. take your best shot, listen to what you can and dont sweat rates and dont look back.

Loren - Paulsax is right about rates - I have a hard time telling the difference between 16/44 and 24/192 with a decent dac - I would not consider 24/384 - files are just too damn BIG!

Will 32/384 out perform 24/96? - to my ears it would be very hard for me to tell the difference. If you played 32/384 track in its entirety, wait a couple of minutes then played the same track but a 24/96 version most people would be hard pressed to determine the difference. Most of the difference would be in the dynamic range - but again there would be very little difference to many peoples ears

I certainly would not let it effect my enjoyment of the music. But then I listen to vinyl with all its pops and crackles

I set my upper limit to 24/192 once I saw the file sizes.

Many download site have multiple sample rates available and probably will do for many years to come.

If you think that by choosing a dac with a higher sample rate you are avoiding obsolesence - think again - within a couple of years there will be some other technology to knock it off its perch.

Nice thing about the Schiit - they have designed it to handle upgrades as technology change - will they have a 32/384 upgrade at sometime? Who knows - it might take a whole new model

Again - as Paulsax says - take your best shot and move forwards.

Ok that sounds good. I didn't know HD was a higher bit than standard cd's. Good to know.