I agree. Hitting perfect notes constantly with little or no variation is pretty hard for a person to do. Now anything "live" or proof of humanity is better sounding since it's not as sterile.

I agree with this. I prefer live music with the imperfections. And I like it when unmixed live recordings are leaked

Then it comes down to preference, but the craft and discipline objectively evolved as a result. Just as your trained ear may keep your preference to more refined percussive - a subject matter expert may care more for their native, untrained materials on their topic. In either case, music progressed in spite of the trained ears, just as AI will progress all walks of life in spite of the subject matter experts.

Nonetheless, trained ears and subject matter experts can still pick their preference.

It allowed people to see the difference between drum machines and humans. Drummers could practice to sound more like the ‘perfect’ machines, but more importantly the best drummers learned how to differentiate themselves from machines. The best drummers actually became more human. Listen and look at Nate Smith - this guy plays with timing and feel and audience reactions in ways that machines cannot. Sometimes tools let humans expand their creativity in ways previously unheard of. Just like the LLMs are doing right now.