I'd say it's a matter of 'signal to noice ratio'; some genres (or people) tolerate more 'undesired noice' than others.

An unfortunate example: back in the 40's-50's the Finnish Broadcasting C. had done a few hours of tape recordings with Teppo Repo (1886-1962), who was propably the last real master of Finnish and Karelian traditional wind instruments (shepherd's horns, pipes, flutes, wooden whistles and what ever). Later - in the 60's - practically all those irreplaceable tapes were destroyed being 'of no quality'; the poor man could be heard breathe in every now and then!! (Luckily these tapes were not the only recordings of TR.)

AKS