At every step in that path there is more noise and distortion added, all of it cumulative with little/no "restoration" possible. In a hobby full of small gains, this "lossy is just fine" audiophile seems odd to me but different strokes for different folks.

My point is that the wasted bits or lower sampling rate or more compression doesn't result in audible 'loss' you esentially get the same output with slightly more distortion like 0.1db more aka inaudible. That is what I am pointing at, that it isn't garbage in garbage out as people seem to think...

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What source are you listening to with an SNR below 70 that isn't vinyl
and thus not applicable to lossy digital compression vs lossless digital
compression discussion?

16bit music with some volume attenuation will get you pretty close to 70/80db in practice. But it is not about the exact number but it is about the fact that a higher bitdepth like going from -96 to -120db (16->24bit) probably will result in no perceivable audible difference due to upstream limitations.

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And lossless streaming costs the same as lossy these days...see Amazon HD and Apple Music.

It seems pretty common to purchase flacs on hdtracks and to have qobuz/tidal on this sub so for some people that most certainly is not the case (the people that also seem to care about this topic)