I love bad horror movies and I’ve noticed a common trend. They all seem to have super high pitched random background sounds that irritate the fuck out of me! Like I just got one of those Digimon 20th anniversary guys a few months ago, and just noticed after the battery died I’ll be hearing it cry while watching bad horror movies. I’m an older millennial who took great care of my hearing in my younger days so tomorrow isn’t an issue. But I hear these high pitched sounds that make me wonder if the battery was really dead, only to check out my digivice and find that it is still completely dead.
I think the truth of it is, good sound engineering costs money, time, or both. I both ran sound and did sound design for local stage theater and I was shocked at how little the designers knew how to make their transitions seamless and avoid clipping, resonant frequencies, static, and a whole mess of other issues, many of which need fixes during recording rather than post.
It took me about 5 years working with audio software before I was making stuff for other people but a lot of other people have the confidence to learn their skill working with live projects, project result be damned. I go back and listen to my early stuff and I hear all sorts of mistakes I didn’t even know I was making.
Access to good hardware/software can also be a major detriment. I’ve had to sacrifice many design ideas due to available tools. When at the end of the day, it comes down to bad audio vs no audio at all, there’s an obvious winner.