I must have missed the subtlety in 'Gah.. some opinioned person' that meant I mis-interpreted your post as not endorsing the xiph link.
I'm not sure what you mean when you talk about 'impulse response' what is this and how might it change the conclusions drawn by the paper?
The stuff about imperfect filters is dealt with in the section about oversampling afaict (and is consistent with the second link you've offered).
There is very little doubt that higher sample rates and bit depths are of benefit to recordists (although it has to be said many of the benefits are not purely sonic but relate to ease / quality of processing and provision of headroom), but this is a hi-fi forum so we're talking about (mostly) playback, (and this is what Monty is talking about too, it's about replay not capture) in this regard most of those benefits are pretty much moot.
I find the piece to be well informed, logically structured and apparently based on good research. It starts with the function of the ear and moves back towards the theory and practice of digital audio. Using empirical research to establish an understanding (or opinion in your terms) is fairly standard practice.
There are some links claimed by some to provide rebuttal in this thread: http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/thread....317660/page-3 but others in the thread claim they're not as substantial as a rebuttal but a bit of a spread of understanding, this seems to suggest that Monty's piece may be not be 100% accurate but that it is substantially true.