Audio rate not working ffmpeg

[Budman1]

Is anyone having problems converting audio sample rate to a different rate with the latest ffmpegs? I tried changing AAC audio rate from 25k to 44.1K
ffmpeg -i video.mp4 -c:v libx264 -c:a aac -r:a 44.1k -b:a 129k output.mp4
It accepts it but does not change it.

The only combination that works is:
ffmpeg -i video.mp4 -c:v libx264 -c:a aac -ar 44.1k -ab 129k output.mp4 does not change audio sample rate

I searched the internet but could not find where the attributes had been exclusively changed. Video codec still takes -b:v, -bv, and -b ???

Update.. the bitrate fails to set not matter what option you select.

[pandy]

Try to use explicit audio filter "aresample=resampler=soxr:osr=44100:cutoff=0.990:d ither_method=none" .

[Budman1]

Pandya, thank you. I will try that but it is important for me to sometimes change both the sample rate and bitrate. This may solve the sample rate problem but why did they eliminate the -r:a that I have always used and why is bitrate not changing at all with any designation?