krssn wrote:As for the 'if you are not a bat or a dog you won't hear those high and low sounds' remark. I knew that comment was coming. In my opinion, even if we don't hear or perceive those sounds counsciously, they still play a role in how the music sounds as a whole and is -again- perceived...
The thing is, we don't
need to rely on opinions in this matter, because there is an objective way to determine if this is true: double-blind listening tests. It is entirely possible that ultrasonic frequencies may cause differences in the audible spectrum or otherwise impact the listening experience, and if that's the case, it should be possible to distinguish between content that contains and content that does not contain ultrasonic frequencies.
If these frequencies are important, then music sampled at 96 kHz and 192 kHz should sound better (or at least different) than music sampled at 44.1 kHz, because higher sampling rates will capture the same ultrasonic content as analogue recording devices. To my knowledge, there are a grand total of
zero professional double-blind listening tests where people could distinguish between 96 kHz and 44.1 kHz music, which means that so far nobody has been able to demonstrate that ultrasonic frequencies are important to the listening experience.
Remember, the burden of proof lies with those saying that there
is a difference between having ultrasonic frequencies and not having them. You can't prove that something doesn't exist, so the null hypothesis is always that A and B are the same until somebody can provide objectively obtained and replicable evidence that they are different in some way.
The main reason that people enjoy listening to vinyl is that the analogue recording process introduces artifacts that people find audibly pleasing. It is not because analogue recording devices are more accurate than digital ones; they just inject a distinctive "warmth" into the audio that people find enjoyable. That does not mean that it provides a more accurate listening experience, especially since humans often seem to find less accurate experiences more enjoyable than accurate ones. (Look at how high-FPS movies are viewed as "weird", because people are used to the choppy motion provided by the standard 24 FPS that has been used in films for decades. It's objectively true that 24 FPS provides inferior smoothness of motion to higher FPS, but people like it better anyway.)