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Isn't this a question of bandwidth? The less data sent over the net, whilst maintaining a decent level of quality, the better for the end user.

The question of the available higher sampling rates are most often used at the recording stage, to capture the highest quality possible. And 'highest possible quality' will of course depends on your microphone.

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I'm not so sure: there are internet radio stations streaming in 320 kbps (maximum bitrate supported by mp3), but I see none going above 16bit/44.1kHz, as if there's some kind of hard limit.

Could you elaborate? I'm not sure of what you're 'not so sure of'.

I am not sure the bit depth and sample rates of web streaming services are simply the question of conserving bandwidth and not the result of some underlying limitation of some web standard.

Ok, thank you. I am not aware of any such limitation in any web standard. Any audio, and in fact 'all', information sent is converted to digital. Any amount of data can theoretically be sent. Receiving/demodulating, that data will depend on the internet service and equipment at your end - regardless of what is in that data, be it audio, video, imagery.

In reality, the general public does not have access to such powerful internet services so companies rely on compression codecs to supply things like 8k TV, and other media with high data rates.

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