I have been involved with standards and know many people who have been on standards committees for most of my career… most are information technology in the high technology industry… including working with lots of electrical engineers developing high end DACs and other components of the subcomponents in the stuff we audiophiles use. They, by their very nature have compromises. There are always factions trying to optimize for their application. The niche groups generally do not drive the standard. There is always a better way to do something in a specific situation. A proprietary one… there are big costs to do this. The best thing to do is operate within the parts of the standard that nets you the greatest performance, don’t where it doesn’t matter.
Standards serve an important function, to allow a multitude of vendors to build or write code to a common interface. Hence allowing guaranteed interconnectivity. And not to in have everyone redevelop a standard communication spec and connection each time. This is a huge amount of work.
However, given different applications a developer can choose to follow every aspect or not. If they don’t and it is a high end designer (a competent one) they will do it for a reason. Afterall, they are going for the best possible sound and that will only happen by connecting to other components.