Comment Re:Hardware sampling rates (Score 1) 121
A good pair of headphones and analog signal generator says I can hear a difference.
The Nyquist limit, if you weren't familiar, takes energy out of waveforms, canceling it out if you're lucky, but usually turning it into a lower frequency. Try it yourself, generate a sine wave sweep from 1kHz to 22kHz and take a listen to all the noise that appears even at two octaves below the limit.
Two octaves below the Nyquist limit of a CD is about 5.5kHz, as you very kindly point out, which I would call rather audible.
The process of making a high-quality recording involves adding an analog low-pass filter before ADC, or making a high-quality recording (192kHz sample rate) and applying a low-pass filter before downsampling, so as to make sure the high-band signals don't show up as lower-frequency noise (though still rather high pitched, commonly like someone forgot to disable their snare drum). It is audible, and it does make a difference.