Indeed, bit depth is hardly the problem. Uncompressed 16/44 sounds really good, and they can offer that now.
The problems are compression and end-user audio equipment. (And they are only problems if the consumer cares.) If the industry wants to tangibly move quality forward, they should simply up the standard bitrate to 320 or beyond, today.
I can agree - hearing a well mastered CD on some decent (not super high end, just good) amp and speakers, in a quiet environment, shows there is plenty of detail and dynamic range.
My nice amp and headphones show me that even decently encoded MP3s are often limited by things further down the playback chain (dac/amp/speakers/headphones) than the audio format itself.
The problems are compression and end-user audio equipment. (And they are only problems if the consumer cares.) If the industry wants to tangibly move quality forward, they should simply up the standard bitrate to 320 or beyond, today.