I hope it's at least intellectually honest. So many A/B/X tests using a stepped on loud and treble-y master that would sound the same on a wire recording machine when this stuff comes up.
I think there are a couple fair points to be made though. (Based on my experience FWIW.)
Cheaper DACs used to be significantly poor sounding at SD sample rates. Not so much of a gap anymore. There's also the irony that the higher end AD and DA converters sound very nearly or truly just as good at SD sample rates as they do at HD sample rates.
Early generation sample rate conversion was pretty damaging. Especially converting SD to SD (44.1k < > 48k). 20 years ago, going out DA -> analog connection -> AD to "convert" sample rates was always cleaner. That's changed with algorithms like SOX.
The volume war CDs with the bionic treble boosts...
We're SO far away from anything to do with format limitations with this. You can't really even evaluate that variable. That's not the sound of 44.1k or even 16 bit!
I think edge cases can still be a thing and generation loss can stack up. (Generation loss being analog domain, digital resolution based, or digital conversion or transcoding based.)
24/96 is bulletproof I think. No matter what previous generation loss a previously damaged recording might have, 24/96 with proper converters and analog stages captures the full recording. No more edge cases. No matter what.
But I think 24/48 would be a fine format and not cause any damage 99.999% of the time. The limiting factor will still be the quality of the mix and the handling in mastering. Lots of crude mixes out there. Especially the pop stuff right now.
I've heard all kinds of generation loss artifacts over the years. I've been a card carrying member of the audiophile police. I upgraded sample rate clocks back in the day (remember those Aardvark units?) and heard a big difference. All the conversion stuff I've mentioned. Bought into Apogee back when they were just a stunning upgrade. Copying an already troubled analog recording and finally reaching a stage to be able to make a copy that sounded exactly the same with no further snowballing of quality. (I keep mentioning the troubled generation loss recording because it's a ringer of an edge case and calls out weakness. Of course a pristine recording will show no damage short of gross operator error copying from point A to B.)
And I really think we've evolved to where any decently pro converter units will deliver at 24/48 and you would not pick out a difference in a million dollar listening room. I'm sure there are still some muddy AV receivers out there with crap converter circuits that perform better with HD program. But you know what? You can upsample those files to 96k with SOX and then hear them more true to the master. (You'll actually find some receivers that upsample as their standard feature to achieve better sound.)
My 2c.