Wrong again. As a sound designer I can choose to import a 192kHz file into a 48kHz PT session in two ways, one as resampled audio which means pitch & duration stay the same, OR I can choose to import it without SR conversion, in which case the audio plays at quarter speed & pitch is 2 octaves lower. We use both techniques ALL the time, every day. It's a common technique every sound designer uses.
You are arguing about techniques you have no experience with.
I do not use the DACs in the MixPre. Its a recording device. The field recordings & studio recordings are transferred as data and used in a 32bit float 192kHz Protools session. So the recorders DAC is completely irrelevant.
The sounds are then used as source material, for processing and manipulation at 192k, 96k and 48k. There is no debate to be had. This is how film sound designers work & have worked for years now.
The half speed you call naive is again just showing your ignorance. Sound editors have been using this technique since the days of recording on a Nagra at 15ips and literally replaying at 7.5ips half speed, and at 3.75ips for quarter speed. There is nothing naive about it, it is a very well know technique. To be able to achieve the same result digitally with full spectrum has impacted every feature film you have experienced in recent years. Again I speak from decades of lived experience.
Dude I've been doing sound design on films using these techniques for years. There is zero 'woo' involved, it is ALL practical evidence based use. I've been using 32bit float multitrack field recorder by Sound Devices MixPre10-II professionally for many years now. The recorder has three preamps per mic input, each gain staged to provide optimum signal to the 32bit float AD. Read this to clarify your thinking:
https://www.sounddevices.com/32-bit-float-files-explained/
Surely you understand a recording made at 48kHz has a max freq response of 24kHz and played at half speed that max freq is 12kHz and at quarter speed only 6kHz. You can very clearly hear the filter cut off due to Nyquist. Record at 192kHz with mics capable of 100kHz capture and when played at quarter speed, the sound is full spectrum because there is no truncated frequency response. And when I load a 192kHz recording to izotope RX I can literallu see the harmonics going up to 96kHz. (not with every sound of course)
I repeat, i am not talking about 'normal' listening. I am talking about an industruy you have no knowledge or lived experience with, so spare me the incorrect claims about what can & cant be heard.
The OP is a bit off with their description of why pro audio engineers work in higher bit rates and sample rates. We use 24bit to preserve low level sounds eg reverb, breaths etc and use 32bit float when recording as the headroom is so massive clipping is not an issue (other than of course still neeing to avoid overloading microphones with max SPL - cleanly recorded distorted sound is still a fail). Unclipping 32bit float feels like voodoo - I did a test, recording fireworks & unclipping the 32bit float recordings.
I use microphones that can 'hear' up to 100kHz (Sanken CUX100K) and for film sound design playing 192kHz audio at half and quarter speed the results are very significant, and reveal there IS 'content' above human hearing. Irrelevant for general listening but very important for sound design.
The author could do a bit more work to make their opinions more valid. First, what speakers were they listening on and in what environment? If attempting to do critical listening, you do not use low quality speakers in a reverberant listening space with room mode colouration & cancellation.
Second, why not do a null test? Invert phase of MP3 and mix it with uncompressed WAV file. The remaining audio IS the difference, and it is audible.. But it is only significant if you have a good sound system & have ears capable of critical listening.
Third, what volume SPL were they listening at? A compressed JPG looks ok on a small screen but project it large and the image becomes blocky. Same applies to audio.
Fourth, tester fails to mention age and results of a recent hearing test. Maybe they have no perception over 12kHz? We do not know.
One thing that is lost when using auto cameras is using focus & DOF as part of composition. With an auto-everything camera, the only part the user does is frame the shot. But composing requires thought about where you choose to place the focal plane, and the depth of field. Also lost with auto digital is pre-visualisation. No need for it as most people just bang off shots & look at the result. The delay of seeing film developed means film prohotographers learn to previz their shots. Less and better.
You are arguing about techniques you have no experience with.