One way to look at this is to view one bit as serial and 16+ bit as
parallel.  There are a few  USB (Universal Serial Bus) audio devices on
the market now and I also read about Ethernet used as multichannel audio
cable.  So you may see more and more of those devices become available. 
There were already CD players with 1-bit converters several years ago.   

Job van Zuijlen

Paul wrote:
> 
> 
> And then there's the _real_ lone nuts in the wilderness, who claim that
> PCM was a mistake from the get-go, and we should be converting
> everything to some sort of 1-bit, extremely-high-sampling-rate
> technology that Sony is now using for archival masters; they claim that
> this blows the pants off of every other format currently in use (in part
> by eliminating the anti-aliasing filters). Who knows. I don't even
> understand how this system works. Too bad it's completely incompatible
> with all existing software and hardware... I wonder if those guys are
> right, and I wonder if we'll ever get to find out; or if we're now stuck
> with PCM regardless.