Your right, I was tired. 96khz and 24 bit

Yes, your ears can’t hear quieter sounds that are near the frequency of a loud sound. And some frequencies cancel out higher frequency sounds as well. This is the reason that lossy audio compression works. You can throw away all noise outside of you ability to hear. It is a significant amount of data that can be tossed.

In addition audio is collected at a certain bit rate (8 bit, 16 but, 32 bit, 96 bit). As well as at a certain sample rate (44khz, etc). Modern audio cards can sample audio well above your ears ability to distinguish the individual changes or frequencies.

We often use this to our advantage when capturing audio. For example capturing at 96 bits is similar to modern HDR cameras in that you can capture both the quietest and loudest sounds we can detect, at the same time, even if both together would never be in the same final mix. This lets us set and forget our mic gains without worrying about blowing out the sound.