I did. I just don't see how this is any different than intentionally removing features from software in order to sell it at lower prices.
If the feature differentiation is achieved by taking the premium offering and adding a component to remove functionality, then that feels a lot worse than taking the mid-range offering and adding components to result in the premium one.
Would people feel a lot better if instead they just went and changed the circuitry to produce lower quality sound?
Yes, as long as there was a halfway plausible explanation that it cost less to produce.
Hardware does have a per-unit manufacturing cost, and people expect a more expensive product to cost more to make.