I certainly don't have golden ears; I'm no audiophile, and I'm getting on in years. 44KHz FLAC is easily good enough for me. But I tire of listening to MP3 music, after a few tens of minutes; it seems to lack the presence and immediacy that keeps me interested.
Not really. I'm not proposing a hypothesis that needs testing; I'm just reporting subjective anecdata. I don't need to test it, because even if I'm deluded it costs me 300GB instead of 100GB. Pfft.
"Lying to yourself" is silly talk; that implies that I'm knowingly telling myself a falsehood, which doesn't make sense. At worst, I'm mistaken.
You are aware of a common fact backed up by mountains of empirical data, a strong physical explanation, and fundamentals of information theory, but tell yourself this lie:
>I'm convinced that we can "hear" frequencies well above the reputed 20KHz limit of human hearing
This is a lie. You tell it to yourself. You must see this.