More bits means: • Less quantisation noise, so your noise floor is a bit lower and therefore, when you're mixing stuff together, you accumulate less noise • M

More bits means: • Less quantisation noise, so your noise floor is a bit lower and therefore, when you're mixing stuff together, you accumulate less noise • More numerical room to play with, you can scale or shift the volume up and down more without clipping and with less loss of accuracy With 16-bit CD audio, you can't just convert to 24-bit and suddenly have less noise. You might get more room, though. As for higher sampling rates (more kHz, if you will), I think Monty mentioned some benefit regarding less sharp aliasing filters (can have a larger transition band from 20–48kHz, say, rather than from 20—22.1kHz), but it's not something I understand the benefit of well.