There's also the accessibility case, as its quite common for people to have wildly different abilities in auditory discrimination, including auditory processing disorders. That's probably a big reason why people have such differences of opinion of how bad they perceive the problem to be. Its likely such a selective pressure on the industry that a number of people just don't stick around because of it, so the industry likely undercounts it.

Any kind of auditory discrimination challenge someone has will lead to much higher cognitive load to interpret noisy transmissions. That cognitive load is a resource that could be better spent on other flight instruments and crisis situations.

Putting a design lens on, someone with APD an extreme user who, if properly made accessible to, would wind up improving everyone's experience not just their own.

I wonder if a switch to digital could keep transmitting on analog for legacy needs while having a second digital system be the primary one used.