Excellent question. One that should be taken seriously.
In direct answer to your question I say Yes! It does bother me in that studio wiring and connectors can be easily improved at fairly minimal cost. So much of the wiring in a studio is done for convenience as opposed to sound quality.
What Trentpancakes doesn't say is that you can still make good sounding recordings in these studios. It's easy enough to bypass most studio wiring, consoles and patchbays and go direct to the recorder. Many engineers bring a handful of "special" microphones and mic pres with them to a session. Skillful engineers can assess what they have to work with and adjust accordingly.
What I think audiophiles don't understand is the engineer's primary job is to capture a good performance. The studio can be a chaotic place where the sound engineer is not the man in charge. People can be milling around, eating pizza, the girlfriends are comparing shoes, the singer's on the phone, the producer is out of the room and the guitar player is just messin' around with some chords and he'll suddenly bark into the mic, "did you get that?". In that hectic environment a good engineer has decent sounding tape of what the guitarist was playing.
When all is said and done when a studio/producer/engineer does adopt audiophile standards, I'm thinking Mapleshade, you do get better sounding recordings.
