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not to be condescending but is there really a reason to process and keep audio above what the human ear can hear which is typically 16Khz ?
sure, there may be audio at frequencies above 16Khz but if you cant hear it, whats the point ?
Hi. From my understanding the oversampling has to do with a few things, chiefly anti-aliasing:
wiki Oversampling#Anti-aliasing
The sampling rate needs to be at least double what the maximum auduble frequency is. So for 22050hz you need a sampling rate of 44100hz or higher.
wiki Nyquist frequency
More info about it in this article:
wiki Sampling (signal processing)#Sampling rate
edit: Oh, i might have misread your question. I believe the answer would be while adults hearing starts to fade out in the upper end of the spectrum around 16khz, children can often hear up to the full 20khz. Loss of frequencies is common with age.
wiki Hearing range