alpine85, you asked:
> are you saying that a recording that is converted from 96kHz > 44.1 would be noisier than one recorded at 44.1?
Any conversion adds noise, but whether you will hear it will depends in part on the noise level in the original signal. Usually with live recording there is already enough noise that the difference won't be audible, although it is real. That's why I said "very slightly worse."
> Would that noise outweigh the benefit of recording at the higher frequency?
Whatever benefit there would be from recording at the higher frequency would be lost AND there would be added noise, so it's not one penalty versus the other--it's one penalty PLUS the other.
> Or is there no benefit at all of recording at 96 if you're going to downsample anyway?
The only benefit would be that you would have an original 96 kHz recording, if that is of value to you for some other reason (as it has been suggested, you might have another use later on for the same recording at a higher sampling frequency). But the 44.1 kHz "end product" wouldn't benefit sonically from having been recorded originally at 96 kHz.
When I talk about "sonic benefit" I mean "a more accurate or precise rendering of the original signal." Whenever any processing alters the sound of a recording, there can be opinions on both sides as to which one sounds better; I can't predict which one anyone will prefer.
I'm just saying that, for example, a 96 kHz recording could (wouldn't necessarily, but could under some circumstances) preserve the phase relationships among very high-frequency tones a little better than a 44.1 kHz recording, and that advantage (whether or not it is audible, which is a whole other question) would be entirely lost by converting to 44.1--so you could get the same level of phase linearity by starting out at 44.1, without the added noise of the conversion on top of the loss of phase linearity.