But this is pointless. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Again: "The signal chain all the way though is typically garbage these days anyway. Cheap headphones, choppy digitization, noisy devices. 75% of your customers are not even equipped to discern the difference." Nobody knows the quality of the source here so whatever appears at the other end is meaningless anyway.

Sure, you can make the argument that efforts to appease the 25% of folks who have invested the $3k-to-$5k (or more--sometimes much more) necessary to make a high level of source detail clearly audible at the other end are simply wasted. You're broadcasting color television signals to viewers who only have black-and-white sets.

But this is not the same as asserting that it's not even there to begin with, or that intentionally degrading your signal to make it cheaper to provide is not, at some level, disingenuous. Of course it is.

But lots of people are perfectly willing to make the trade-offs offered, of course: price against quality against convenience. Pick any two, as they say. But there are also plenty such as OP here who are not even fully aware of how much they are missing, or how much their expectations have been lowered. And it always saddens me when the good-faith efforts of talented musicians and meticulous recording engineers are essentially flushed away.

But, to be sure, the only one whose ox is really being gored is the last one on the chain --the consumer.