[thenightangel]

Imho, it's about mastering..I took a Riaa/AES bootcamp in audio and sound a year or so ago, the redbook spec 48K for cd master, 44.1/16b for playback ( the commercial, distributed release). in a sense, recording at 96 for tracking in the studio, stereo master at 48, the dupe facility then prints from master at consumer spec 44.1. By recording at 96 it's all about the bandwidth "headroom", then on mixdown, data compression etc then consumer grade (more compression) at least it was explained that way to us. the bitrates exist for differing formats, since say a digital hdcam fieldshoot will be in a given spec, in theory, it can be transferred into a dav environment, edited, mastered ( up to analog in a few cases) then printed to 35mm hires, or whatever print spec you're aiming aiming for, each spec moving up and back the resolution matrix based on purpose- the info is in the RIAA Redbook I seem to recall a "Bluebook" as well (?)..it provides all of the info regarding workflows, audio/video film standards, commonly used terminology for recording and distro related stuff, why all these different resolutions are out there and what they're for, etc and on and on.. a quick read through that increased my productivity by a factor of 3 or so. hope that helps.