> Not really. Most of the world has moved on. MP3 is a very lossy compression system that has really gone by the wayside as it was replaced in every use for other more efficient and less lossy compression schemes.
Eh, I will beg to differ a bit.
I observe that while MP3 got a deservedly terrible reputation early on, it was because the high expense of disk space, and slow download speeds, meant that songs were compressed so severely they became unlistenable (64kbps stereo was not uncommon). 15 years ago I was compressing live recordings of my band to MP3 format at 128kbps as a compromise between quality and filesize. They sound pretty bad today unless I'm in the car where you can't tell.
Today MP3 at 256kbps or 320kbps with VBR gives a listening experience which is superb -- double-blind listening tests, using normal human beings, comparing those rates vs uncompressed, show no statistically significant difference, even though they're still "lossy".
OTOH, there are some rare people whose hearing is so acute that they can reliably distinguish between uncompressed PCM at 20 bits sample depth vs. 24 bits depth. I imagine they might be able to tell 320kbps VBR MP3 from lossless.
But who cares? Delivering very high quality sound, with file format portability and player compatibility, is worth infinitely more in the marketplace of real products, than the perfection only audible to 0.00001% of the population.
Has the world moved on? Well, better compression schemes have been developed, and the existing ones like MP3 have been improved immeasurably since their introduction. But every time someone posts an audio file in a format that most of the world cannot play, they will look around for something more portable and compatible. High bit-rate MP3 and other lossy compression schemes will continue to enjoy popularity in the general marketplace.
BTW, a few years back, I ripped an LP and compared it with the Itunes equivalent song and my MP3 was >much better< (had more depth) than the Apple iTunes equivalent of the time.
Makes you wonder how good the iTunes capture was and is in the first place. What is their source? What is the quality of their equipment? Did they start with the original tapes, rip from a CD, etc. Did they manage the digital artifacts correctly during capture and render?
Anyway...
It has been an interesting ride — the past 25 years or so. Originally, the digital versions (photos and audio) were inferior to their analog counter parts. It was convenience over quality. Actually the CD was the first step in digitization and everyone bragged about the quality of a compact disc.
However, as the technology has improved and storage space is plentiful and data transfer speeds have increased, the digital equivalent is comparable to the analog counter parts plus with the addition of convenience.
Of course, if you have perfect vision and hearing, you might notice a difference. Few people do. Those same people probably listen to LPs. More power to them!
So how do they create a high res version. Do they go back to the original source and render it or somehow upscale the low res version?
One thing I have learned when coping something that you can never improve on the original. The original is it and can only degrade.
Maybe they use some kind of interpolation algorithm. Who knows but I would be skeptical of the quality and I don't think that anyone has ever asked this question. Most people don't care.