Grover Gardner wrote:
I don't claim to be an expert at all but that's my understanding.
I'm not an expert either. However, I suspect it's not an issue that has an all encompassing best approach. At the very least the results will depend on your DAC and whatever you may use to upsample before sending the bit stream to the DAC. Some DACs may sound best with a bit perfect stream of the original, some may benefit from upsampling before hand. I've done it both ways over the years, but have settled on sending the original bits to my Holo Audio Spring DAC and letting it convert them into analog. I'm quite happy with the results.
If I'm going into my DEQX, I up/down sample everything to 96k since that's what it uses internally for all its processing. The DEQX I'm using will accept up to 24/192, but still processes at 24/96. I've also found that it can take a noticable amount of time to switch between some bit rates and miss the first note or two of the new bit rate track. Feeding it a steady diet of 24/96 eliminates that problem.
In any event, my opinion is your mileage will very likely vary from anyone else.