Again, few real world converters provide more than 20 bit performance anyway, and most domestic replay systems struggle to achieve the equivalent of 15 bits of dynamic range. The typical ambient background noise of a quiet domestic listening room might be 25SPL on a good day. Few high quality domestic speakers can produce peaks of 100dB SPL at the listening position. The very best with mighty amplification might achieve 110dB SPL or so -- if there are no neighbours or small children to worry about. So we're are looking -- at best -- of a usable dynamic range in the home of 75-85dB... which would require between 12 and 14 bits to encode perfectly, with the system noise floor swamped by the ambient acoustic noise floor, and sound level peaks painfully loud.
What I'm saying is that there is nothing wrong, restrictive, quality-limiting or inappropriate with 16 bit music reproduction systems for the domestic environment. It is actually the ideal format, in fact.
The 24 bit requirement comes from the need for higher quality (greater dynamic range and bandwidth) at the recording end of the chain so that the music production process has 'room to manoevre' -- so that unexpected peaks don't clip when recording, so that the noise floor doesn't become audible to the end user when dozens of tracks are mixed together, and so that the concatenation of band-limiting filters throughout the recording and post-production chain don't encroach on the wanted audio.
All of which means that 24 resolution is helpful at the recording and mixing end of the chain, but that 16 bit is absolutely fine for the reproduction end.
24 bit files offer no improvement in soundstage width, or mix dynamics, or timing fluidity... So if it sounded different it was a different mix. The only difference you should have heard would be a lower noise floor.
More information isn't recorded. This is a very common fallacy. A 16 bit system properly dithered can record and reproduce audio signals down to around -120dBFS the same as a 24 bit system. The only difference is that it's well into the noise floor in a 16 bit system, and roughly level with the noise floor in a 24 bit system. But it's the same audio information...
Look at it this way. Pros use 24 bit to enable a material to be recorded and mixed with adequate headroom without compromising the noise floor. Mastered tracks (currently) have no headroom. So to turn a 24 bit source recording to a mastered track you're going to introduce gain which raises the noise floor... And so you no long have 24 bit dynamic range any more. No 24 bit system delivers the theoretical 144dB signal-noise ratio. The best manage about 120dB, and most about 110dB. If a source recording leaves 15dB headroom -- which is not unusual -- removing the headroom to produce a masted track for commercial release will have a signal-noise ratio of 95dB at the very most... Which, funnily enough, is the same as a perfect 16 bit system.
As I said, 16 bits is entirely adequate and well optimised for consumer listening formats.
It's the mastering which makes it sound different not the bit-rate.
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