Other angle: often interview with candidate A goes well, but then you meet candidate B who is comparable but wants less money. From my experience that happens more often now, as there are more people who are desperate and willing to lower their salary expectations to a level that I wouldn't consider reasonable few years ago.

I have hired a lot of people and I have never seen a situation where candidate A and B are both within the target salary band but one was chosen because they were cheaper. You'd always choose the one that was better. I can only see a slightly lower expected salary being a factor at extremely early stage startups with very little funding.