I was in Best Buy testing that same unit and had the same reaction. The amount of travel to get a volume change is a bit absurd. Glad to know the other options work.

Big yes to number 5, plus wall of sound BS mastering that destroys the soundstage.

Timely question for me, just went to Capital AudioFest with over a 100 hotel rooms set up as listening stations with really high end gear, heard a lot of speakers in the $10,000 to $75,000 range. The sound is generally crisp but mostly based on 8” or smaller speakers (or electro static or magnetic or such). My 50 year old speakers use 12” woofers and outperform, to my ear, most of this new technology.

Then I heard a new speaker by Clayton Shaw that uses 2 12” woofers in each speaker plus a tweeter that are set in a plank, no box. They cost about $3,000 for a pair and sounded far better to me than anything else at the show. Made clear to me what I had suspected, that building these narrow boxes with small drivers just can’t provide a decent soundstage.