Just wondering how good is your hearing at 19-20Khz?
Certainly not as good as it was...
Bandwidth problems can be heard without 20KHz response in the ear though. A cutoff at 20KHz has artifacts that extend down to 2KHz. This is why amps and preamps endeavor to have wide bandwidth- to reduce audible phase shift components well within the audio passband.
Most high quality analog formats can extend well past 20KHz (remember CD-4 from the 1970s?); my 1/2" tape machine can do 30KHz passably well at 30ips. Even though you can't hear that high, you sure can hear how much more resolution it has!
One of the keys to superior CDs these days is higher scan frequencies during record mode. We use 88.2KHz 24 bits as a backup of our analog recordings. 88.2KHz is nice because there is no algorithm required to produce a Redbook file, and you don't need a brickwall filter during record mode either. My point here is that Redbook is intentionally limited and compromised, and as long as it is around digital will *never* (which is a very long time) be better than analog- to do so would violate the laws of physics.
I don't think anyone should blame consumers for rejecting other digital formats like SACD... they already got talked into selling a perfectly good LP collection to be replaced by bright-sounding soulless junk. Collectively I don't think they trust the audio industry anymore.