Cartridges and phono settings

[marcor]

-90db to -100dB with no record playing is state of the art, there won't be an analogue phono stage that quiet in all likelihood.
The background noise on an LP will frequently be up around -45dB on the lead in and lead out grooves on typical LPs, with tape hiss adding to this once the audio starts.

When Meridian were doing their work on lossless packing, being pragmatic engineers, they measured the dynamic range of a huge number of LPs.
IIRC the one with the highest dynamic range they found had 11-bit equivalent SNR. So 16-bit is enough to record any LP if levels are carefully set, and 24 bit makes it easy, even with levels set in a slipshod way.
In terms of sampling frequency whilst it is indeed possible to record over 22 kHz onto an LP, very, very few pickup cartridges can retrieve it, and certainly not at high fidelity.
Even in the mid band top quality cartridges have distortion in the 1 to 4% range, and most are up above 15% in the top octave, even if they make it up there, so most, if not all, of what you record at 96kHz sampling which you wouldn't get at 48kHz are cartridge distortion products rather then music.
The recent review of the outstanding £8750 Techdas Ti cartridge shows a plummeting frequency response from 15kHz, around 2% midband distortion rising to 14% at 20kHz. These are SOTA results for a cartridge.
Recording at 96/24 will capture absolutely all of the output of a record player, all going to 24/192 will do is double the file size whilst containing absolutely no more information, which is not a big deal with cheap mass storage but is a bit stupid.

Thank you for your detailed explanation, it make me re think the 192 vs 96. I will try this weekend to do some comparison again between the 2 settings.
Do you have any idea why the reading of the Devialet meters and the one from Audacity through Usb are so different? My d250 with phono connected not playing show a noise of -100dB -90dB if I check the same thing through the Audacity recording meter it show noise up to -57dB.
Thanks

Marco