I think the whole punk thing was more about doing it yourself, and really just doing it! Not so much about sounding shit on purpose (they just happened to sound shit LOL)

We still get to use the punk ethos of do it yourself, we're just lucky that now 30 years on, we have the technology not only to do it ourselves, but to make it sound good! That's the beauty is that yes it's required that you sound shit hot, but these days you can do it virtually for free. You don't even really need to think about it too much, you can just put all of your energy into the artistic free expression side of it, and the computer does the tough part (I'm speaking in general here, obviously there are studio geniuses and big $$$ equipment is going to sound a lot better)

Long live the spirit of PUNK (without the earaches :P)