I've always taken the contextual side of that dichotomy, so I disagree. Regardless, you might give this a quick read -- the Beatles helped make it mainstream. Their sound engineers, who were unsung heroes, used four tracks to the best of their ability. Now anyone can use 64 with a little cheap tech. Just an aside.The history of something doesn't change it's quality.
I had a four-track tascam recorder as a kid. I became pretty good at what the wikipedia post calls "reduction mixing" or bouncing down to one track. It was an art-form. Back then (for me), the more you bounced down on tape the lesser the quality became though. kleinbl00, you remember those days? The limitations we had were really part of the process and made things fun.
As I said, I have no problem appreciating what they did for music. I understand it was a huge contribution. But just because they were a great contributor to the technique, ideas, hardware, w/e, doesn't mean their music was any good. Technically impressive for the time, yes, but the music itself may or may not be good. Another way of putting it would be the Motorola Razr phone (the old flip-phone one). It completely revolutionized phones, and at the time it was amazing (to the point where everyone copied it). By today's standards, the phone is a piece of shit. But what it did for phones was amazing and people can appreciate that while recognizing that it's not all that great of a phone. So knowing the history might make you appreciate it more, it doesn't make it better.
Well, I don't think you can use technology (though you're right about the Razr) as a corollary for music, because tech has function whereas music has form. Art doesn't need to progress to meet the needs of society to nearly as great an extent as technology, although it at times does. I can't escape the feeling that songs like A Change is Gonna Come or Vietnam Song wouldn't have remotely the same effect if they'd come out in 1995. You might argue that effect doesn't influence appreciation but I would argue that they're almost the same thing. To each his own.