They say that at 88kHz you need "half" the plugs because the tracks sounds better and do not need so much EQ and compression...
that is an intresting argument, tempting to say, typically for engineers.
fact is that most plug-ins will require 2x times the CPU when you double the sampling rate ... so even if you only need half the plug-ins you have not won anything. ^^
of course it is true that at 88 or 96 a proper acoustic recording might sound a bit better, but i would not see what this should have to do with "compression".
where the higher sampling frequency can be more interesting are things like denoising and, of course, timestretching and pitching.
Moving to 88kHz in OS9 is only possible for me with AP2496, my Standalone Focusrite LS56 and Logic.
hard to say yes or no here, gear like the one we usually use with OS9 workstations are okay to use at 88 or 96 - but mostly not really better than using the same i/o at 44.
the exception could be using an external clock (that is mainly the apogee), but as tests have shown, not even that is sure.
Now I get the "convert tracks" thing...
i believe upsampling after recording is absolute nonsense. processes which need that, like allpasses and comfilters inside a reverb plug-in will do it internally. no need to clutter the disk, ram, and cpu with double bits.
