There are a number of old Beeb programmes doing the rounds such as 'My Kind of Folk,' 'Navy Lark,' etc. Basically these are low bitrate MP3s from reel-reel / cassette home-taped recordings with all the lossiness and compression that the MP3 format can generate.

However folks are converting them onto FLAC files with high bit-rates and then claiming that they are now high fidelity recordings.

But how can that be? How can detail once compressed ever be restored? Isn't it entropy - you can't ever get back what is lost? Isn't this all a misleading, a bit of a fraud?

The problem is that folks equate FLAC files (which have some compression) with WAV files (which are simply raw data).

But a low bitrate crappy recording in MP3, even when converted to FLAC or WAV, is STILL a low bitrate crappy recording.