For some, ham radio is about radio and building and experimenting with it, or it was.
Now it seems to be more of you buy a radio and talk into it about political nonsense, or their current illness,
or whatever, some like to talk about radio and what makes it work.
You do not have to spend a lot of money for good audio.
Its dirt cheap now.
The Marantz I used I picked up at a fest 40 years ago at least, its solid state, about 25 watts per channel, has bass, mid and treble controls, 6 inputs, tape in and out, low and high cut filters, loudness control,
headphone output and speaker selection.
Its very handy to have besides sounding good.
I got it for $20.00.
I made a rackmount panel for it:

Guys will spend $4000.00 for a radio, and a LOT more for amps and towers and do nothing with the audio eh?
I am glad Icom has lowered the ACTUAL audio response (not what the filter says) in the newer radios.
Per the block diagram there was a high pass filter in the RX audio, a hardware filter I think.
The ones I had did not pass even down to 200 Hz but they transmitted down to 100!
The new Kenwood transmits out to 4 KHz or more I hear, and the RX audio is very good they say, so one company is making improvements.