It's become some kind of mark of quality to not "cheat" like that. Though mostly we're talking about global feedback. You generally can't run these components completely open loop with zero local feedback of any kind and get a usable product; gains would be too high, for starters.
In a related manner, there is some kind of ambivalence, particularly among the old guard, about prepackaged ICs that do all sorts of jobs very well nowadays. "Kids these days can't design these things from scratch" and so on. It's maybe more interesting or rewarding to do things the hard way or alternate way sometimes, and this is feasible when selling audio products with higher than razor-thin penny-pinching margins. Their hands aren't really forced with regards to design decisions to be competitive, outside of maybe the lower-margin stuff like some receivers and some pro audio gear.