In reply to:

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After some experiments, it seems that there may be no difference whatsoever between files encoded at 96kbps\32khz sampling, and files encoded at 96kbps\44khz sampling. The file size is exactly the same to the byte.

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Yes, that's what constant bit-rate (CBR) encoding does - at a given bitrate (96kb/s in your case), you'll always get the same amount of output for a given playback time. The MP3 data will be vastly different, though (as it will between different quality/speed settings in lame).

If you re-encoded at 192kb/s, you'd find that your files would be twice the current size, whichever sample rate you have.