If anyone is interested in reading more about this, the chip I'm using is the Nordic nRF24Z1 . It supports up to 24-bit (with compression) or 16-bit uncompressed 48 kHz and S/PDIF or I2S and also wireless SPI and I2C for control.

Currently I am dealing with a frustrating problem of the device not working with anything but 44.1 kHz sampling rates no matter how it's programmed. It may be that it only does 44.1 kHz over S/PDIF and I have to resort to using I2S via S/PDIF receiver and transmitter ICs to get the other supported rates.

Stu