I am not disagreeing with anything you say but I'm sure we can both agree that the genre of music has a lot to do with how lossless/high-resolution music sounds compared to compressed MP3s.
There are two different concepts in that statement.
Does genre affect the transparency of lossy compression (in this case, MP3) versus the original? I suppose it can, but not inherently so. It would be more accurate to say musical composition and mastering process significantly affect at what point (if any) a lossy compression algorithm can achieve transparency. The test is to take original CD audio (44.1khz sample rate, 16-bit samples) and compare it to MP3 (at whatever bitrate you prefer, 320kbps if you want the best MP3 can provide). Under those circumstances, very few people will notice the difference and on very few tracks under fairly controlled circumstances, regardless of genre. If you're worried about it, test it via ABX testing with headphones. If you can't consistently tell the difference in those conditions, you won't in the car.
Comparing "high-resolution" audio to MP3 is invalid, since the sampling rate and/or bits per sample are typically not the same. There isn't a consistent definition of what "high-resolution" audio is, but it tends to mean that the sampling rate is above the CD audio standard of 44.1khz (typically 48khz, 96khz, or 192khz) and/or the bits per sample is above the CD audio standard (typically 24 bits per sample). These are two different factors to consider.
It's doubtful that higher sampling rates improve audio quality, given how sampling theory and human hearing work. Sampling rate determines the highest frequency that can be captured, which is half of the sampling rate chosen. For example, a 96khz sampling rate can capture frequencies up to 48khz. Human hearing is generally understood to be capped at about 20khz (at best, this tends to degrade with age). Thus, the human ear can't hear anything above about 20khz, which is partially why CD audio sampling was selected to be 44.1khz (thus capturing frequencies up to 22.05khz). Also, you would need equipment capable of reproducing those frequencies, which isn't common in the consumer market. Do we know the frequency response of speakers in Tesla vehicles?
Bits per sample may provide a more discernable improvement in audio quality. By increasing from 16 to 24 bits per sample, the amplitude of a given sample can be more
precisely captured, which can improve the overall quality and create a more faithful reproduction from the source. I think this is the more interesting and worthwhile expansion of audio data when discussing "high-resolution" audio.
Keep in mind, this is meant to be informative and perhaps help reduce concerns about audio formats. None of this is argument that you should be
required to go through the labor and (debatable) loss of quality to listen to your music collection in your vehicle. You've correctly noted that these sorts of audio format technologies have been around for quite some time and many other product manufacturers have better solved these problems in a variety of consumer products.
This is why whenever I hear of them adding frivolous features, as much as I like frivolous features, I wonder... "Yes, but what about fixing the media player?"
Tesla has very poor software development processes, so this is where I couldn't agree more. I consider it unacceptable practice to devote development resources to trivial/extraneous functionality when there are a significant number of known issues with standard feature functionality.
