QUOTE (/mnt @ Jul 25 2009, 22:35)

IMO i think it's a pain for anyone having good hearing at high freqs.
Also the lastest version seems to have a lower lowpass at higher bitrates now.
There were changes in other psychoacoustic parameters and not in the fixed cutoff. These other psychoacoustic parameters introduce in some cases removal of high frequencies.
It is better in some cases to use those bits for lower frequencies, just like you point in your listening test here:
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....st&p=647994Or take for example emese sample:
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=55339This sample will sound better when you resample to 32 kHz than when you encode original 44.1 kHz to 192 kbps (maybe even 320 kbps would sound worse than 32 kHz).
In most cases it is not frequencies above 16 kHz (and especially not above 18 kHz) that make the difference, at least not for most of us.