Well, I was gonna say it, buy Timo said it first. Headroom and noise....
The added headroom (gained from working in 24 bit) makes it a lot easier on one during the mixing stage. This is, in fact fairly easy to see and hear. In terms of audio 'quality', you can't really hear that much. And the difference between sample rates is even more controversial than the difference between bit depth. I can't tell the difference between 24/44.1 and 24/96. I can tell the difference between 24/44.1 and 16/44.1, but once again I can't distinguish 16/44.1 from 16/96. Bit depth is really the big one....
Additionally, there's no human who can hear 44.1kHz. Of course, the upper limit is a little different for everyone, but 15-22kHz is a more reasonable range for the upper limit of human hearing. Now, I can't hear the difference between 44.1 and 96, but some top mix and mastering engineers claim to hear a difference. If, indeed they can, they still can't hear above human hearing potential. And 44.1 is WAY above that. About an octave above it, actually. So anyway, whenever digital audio is created, there is a low pass filter applied at approximately (theoretically exactly) 1/2 the sampling frequency. So it's possible that in as 44.1 environment, a person could possible hear artifacts due to this filtering. At 96kHz, the filter would be applied at approximately 48kHz, once again WAY out of the range of human hearing. So it is possible for some people to hear a difference. I am not one of them. But when someone says they can hear the difference between 96kHz and 192, well, they're either inventing it in their head, or the hardware is somehow treating it different. But it is truly beyond human capacity to hear the difference of sample rates between 96 and 192 (the filters would, of course, be at 48 kHz, and 96 kHz, respectively).
Anyway, I work at 24/44.1 Best compromise between headroom and disk space.
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