I did not suggest that audio cannot be measured quantitatively. However, it generally is not. I've never read a sound bar review that used any kind of objecti

I did not suggest that audio cannot be measured quantitatively. However, it generally is not. I've never read a sound bar review that used any kind of objective measures except maybe SPL. It's always about whether the sound is crisp or muddy and the sound stage is wide or tall or compressed or whatever. I also did not say that the difference between sound bars and receiver setups is too close for human hearing to detect. This is clearly not the case, since it's entirely possible for humans to detect sound differences even between two sound bars or the same receiver with different speakers. However, sounding different doesn't mean one is actually better. When two setups differ in volume slightly, human listeners will consistently choose the louder one as "better" unless the sound is clearly low quality (i.e. no bass, laptop speakers), disregarding the supposed intrinsic superiority of the "better" system.