Purists... ugh. Whether its Blues Purists, Audio Purists or FZ Purists... not my thing.
You
can polish a turd. But, why bother? There is no benefit to having a high-res version of a low-fi recording. This makes me wonder about what is up with your wanting the BTB on a stick. You use alot of qualifying words... Maybe if you could describe your experience with words other than "better".
As in many situations, this is blurred because
sometimes you are right about hi-quality formats making for a better experience. But, this is not an absolute truth and especially not true when we are talking about the Beat the Boots series.
Spaceresearcher wrote:
...
Beat The Boots Volume 1 - Hi-Def 24bit 48KHz or higher USB stick wav delivery would surely be possible (remaster perhaps from original source tapes though)
Beat The Boots Volume 2 - Came out on CD so higher sample rates must already be available (same as above)
Beat The Boots Volume 3 - Only came out in crappy MP3 so higher quality samples would without doubt be available and make this release seamless as well.(same as above)
The above makes no sense. You may call it polishing a turd, I'd say for all the polishing you want to apply, its still the same turd, albeit in a new box.
I should probably mention that these old BTB recordings should sound like old recordings cuz that's what they are. Your ideas of alternate versions is fine, but doesn't change the fact that hi-definition boots are a waste of time, energy and file size.
Let's try to think of what could actually benefit from a more hi-res recording. People like to talk about large dynamic ranges. A hi-res recording will never have a wider dynamic than the original without including expansion processing or otherwise modifying the recording. If you can hear the noise floor on a cd, you won't have less of it on a higher res recording. A wide dynamic range can make for an exhilarating experience. But, it also means that maybe you can't hear shit when you are in a car with the windows open. Personally, I like a bit of compression and every audio Engineer worth his salt uses it at times. People also talk about the tone, timbre, or brittleness. Of course, any 128 kbps or lower bit rate is going to get brittle. But, we're not talking about that are we? We are talking about benefits to hi-res, not the extreme lossy formats. Imo, the best thing any recording can do is sound the same as whatever is input. You don't need hi-res to do that with a boot.
When the Rolling Stones re-released their catalog, I read that you could now hear Charlie Watt's kick-drum pedal squeak when he pressed it. Who wants to hear that? Thousands of bands have spent hundreds of thousands of hours in the studio trying to shut up kick drum squeaks and now I'm supposed to be happy because we have recordings that feature them?
The payoff is what you want it to be, not absolutes like "better" because of format.