Key,

Tape wears out to, and a trained ear can start to hear it as soon as 5 passes. Vinal on the other hand is being scrapped by the needle just as bad as the tape heads and guides but on the vinal it is more important not to play the record more than once a day and hopfully only one side per day. It has something to do with the heat generatted by the friction of that needle.

Of course that is just more useless info that won't get any of us further along in our 'budding' recording biz, but it was interesting when it was explained by a great mastering engineer at the now defunct record manufacturing plant Monark in LA.

Jeremy, the frequancy response of analog stops being flat at like 20 or so Khz, Im sure 96K does get some sort of a repersention as it is basicly only two octives higher than 20+K but each octave is only 25% of the fundamental,as a harmonic, so 96K would be 25% of 25% of like that 24K signal that is rollinf off at like 12 or 18 db per octave.

So to answer your question, yes analog does do 96K, how well it does 96K is an issue that probablly shouldn't be debated.... snicker, snicker

Rupert Neve puts 120K chokes on his gear because his crew can hear the differance in some psyco-accoustical relm that I think only alen halfbreeded human/dog eared souls can deal with. I hear something up there, but I couldn't guarntee it is audio.