> Because for listening, it's proven fact that even professional musicians and mixing engineers using equipment costing >$100k can't tell 24 bit from 16 bit in a proper double-blind A/B test.

Digital samples can and will generate intermodulation distortion, quantization and other audio artifacts when mixed. Using 24-bit lessens or eliminates the effect versus 16-bit.

Experiments and results on this software are here: http://www.sonusparadisi.cz/en/blog/do-not-load-in-16-bit/