It would be more accurate to say they are prioritizing the ears of the average person, HF hearing starts its decline in our teens. But this is an age old industry standard that had been the standard because of limitations of recording, the mediums, transmission, reproduction, and the quirks of our ears. There has only been a brief period in the history of recording where we really used this range, and during that period we saw a resurgence of the old mediums and a great deal of talk about their "warm" sound, part of that sound being the removal of those high frequencies. It is not an accident that almost no instruments produce much of anything above 16khz, the instruments evolved with how we hear and the fact that most everyone has either decreased sensitivity or no hearing above ~16khz.
Comments
It would be more accurate to say they are prioritizing the ears of the average person, HF hearing starts its decline in our teens. But this is an age old industry standard that had been the standard because of limitations of recording, the mediums, transmission, reproduction, and the quirks of our ears. There has only been a brief period in the history of recording where we really used this range, and during that period we saw a resurgence of the old mediums and a great deal of talk about their "warm" sound, part of that sound being the removal of those high frequencies. It is not an accident that almost no instruments produce much of anything above 16khz, the instruments evolved with how we hear and the fact that most everyone has either decreased sensitivity or no hearing above ~16khz.