I was hung up on 24/96k for a while. I can hear the difference easy. But, it takes up to much processing power. And, when you wack it down to 16/44k in a mixdown, it sounds worse than just using 16/44k from the beginning in my experience.
Here's some of my stuff. Milk crates are my friend. 24 tracks of Fostex harddisc. The top deck is a 16 track I run at 24/48. The bottom 8 track deck is older, and it's 18/48.