Confusingly, the article is about two different types of compression. The type of compression you're talking about is compression of dynamic range, which has been an issue since before mp3 players.

Then there is lossy data compression, which also distorts sound, but in different ways. It tends to make high end percussion sound like it's being filtered through bubbly water, for example.

Then they were also taking about increasing sample rates and bit depths, which is another question altogether, and (I think) much less significant than the other two issues.