To be fair, the r/hometheater community feels strongly because they're trying to help people avoid the mistake that's led to these problems. If you care about home theater audio, even a low-end or used AVR paired with low-cost separate speakers will generally provide better results today and more flexibility going forward.
I'm actually looking forward into owning an AVR and starting "simple" (Subwoofer, central speaker and 2x fronts) but I kinda want to future-proof a bit (I'd like 5.1, at least, in the future) so I'm eyeing what are the better options for me to buy in terms of hardware.
I really value having the "freedom" of having more codecs available to work with (Soundbars aren't great for that), but I wanted something "simple" for the time being before I do the actual jump to an AVR.
Interestingly enough my father used to have a 5.1 setup with a Yamaha AVR in the '00s and he told me he was able to go to a specialized store where they let him test a myriad of speakers so he could customize the sound "flavor" to his liking; but seems it's closed and I'm a bit nervous spending money on something I can't hear...
I'm glad to hear that because reading your article, as each new sub-problem arose, I felt increasingly bad for you. We've all been in that spiraling sinkhole where every issue spawns two more :-).
I totally get the conceptual appeal of inexpensive, compact soundbar products: all-in-one, single input and wireless satellites. It seems great. It can even work as long as your sound-field expectations are modest AND you: 1) Happen to have a compatible room, 2) Commit to one incompatible, closed-ended product line, and 3) Nothing goes wrong because, as you discovered, these all-digital, integrated systems are largely opaque. While the initial cost can appear attractive, every dollar is locked into an inflexible system which can't grow beyond what its manufacturer offers and which may not be as good a fit in another room or reusable with other components.
I've never bought (or even considered) a soundbar, even in a context where it might have fit, been slightly cheaper or looked better with less effort - and I'm NOT an audiophile snob or insensitive to price. I'm an engineer so I see this like any other system design, an architectural choice with no perfect solutions, just different sets of trade-offs. Like many engineers, I've learned to value understanding systems from first principles, sometimes right down to the underlying physics of things. This often leads to some useful default assumptions, things which until proven otherwise, I broadly assume are probably directionally true. For example, when it comes to speakers, physical traits like surface area, volume and position matter. While it's true things like wave guides, linear arrays, digital signal processing and acoustic tricks (eg bouncing sound off ceiling/walls) can make smaller or poorly positioned speakers sound bigger or better than they should - it's still using cleverness to overcome a fundamental physical deficit.
Bottom line: all-other-things-equal, there's a point beyond which overcoming the deficits of smaller, fewer or poorly placed speakers yields diminishing returns - no matter what the marketing claims. So, I've always leaned toward investing my limited budgets in decent 'fundamentals' based on physics and economics. In audio, the physics means things like ensuring components have enough size and coverage to handle one of two generic residential sizes: small (bedroom/home office) and large (den/living room). Economically, it means investing in reuse so I'm not always starting over when I move/remodel and can repurpose older components into smaller or larger configs in the future.
Two examples: 1) The main speakers in my teenage daughter's bedroom were the best surrounds I could afford for our living room back when she was born. Getting slightly larger, better full-range surrounds back then paid off because they were good enough and flexible enough to have three lives (so far). 2) The first and cheapest AVR-ish amp I ever bought is now so old it has no digital inputs- but with a $15 BT/Wifi to RCA adapter, it's now driving the speakers above my garage workbench and it's a much better amp than I would ever have bought for our garage. If that AVR or those speakers had been integrated into an all-in-one box or limited to a proprietary ecosystem or digital protocol (wired or wireless) they'd probably already be in a landfill.
Another first principle is 'Ears are analog' and so are speakers and amplifier output stages. While digital formats can be great for storage and transport, all digital audio must become analog before you hear it. Your architectural choice is where in the signal chain it happens. Because home theater loudspeakers must be powered with a wire anyway AND because modern digital wireless transports are complex, opaque and not usually designed with real-time latency guarantees, an objective case can be made there are overall more advantages and less disadvantages to delivering home theater audio the last few feet on an inexpensive, universally compatible, broadly available analog wire. The delay is measured in nanoseconds with no latency, compression, pairing, interference, re-negotiation or channel hopping.
But these advantages do come with trade-offs. Instead of going wireless for satellites, I've had to get a little clever hiding wires, like running flat cables behind baseboard in a rental and, later, spending $70 on the right tools to run in-wall wires in my home. I think these trade-offs are worth it to get the reusability, flexibility, compatibility and transparency (for debugging).
> but I wanted something "simple" for the time being before I do the actual jump to an AVR.
I confess to being an engineer who's worked most of my professional life developing and using digital and analog video/film production tooling but I paused reading that because it's not at all the way I see AVRs and soundbars. Architecturally speaking, AVRs + speakers and integrated soundbars are very nearly identical.
They both take digital signal formats from an HDMI cable and decode the audio portion into analog then send it to either the internal amplifier for output at 'speaker level' on speaker wire or to a pre-amplifier for output on red and white RCA plugs as 'line level'. The difference is the soundbar just bundles the wires and speakers into one opaque box where the speaker wires are hidden, very short and shockingly poor quality. The worst part is you never even have any choices about which wires, which speakers or where they're placed.
That 'sea of red and white jacks' on the back of an AVR may look complicated at first glance but it's actually quite simple and you won't even connect anything to most of them. They're just options in case you ever need them. Example: In our primary home theater system I actually use two AVRs. One is a fairly cheap, newer AVR I bought just to decode the HDMI into analog audio. The second AVR actually drives the 8 main speakers. It's a very high-end Denon from 2002 - so old it doesn't even have any HDMI connectors. The former owner of our house said it was 'too heavy to move' and asked if I'd mind if he just left it. Realizing it was a literally a classic >$4,000 audiophile amp which weighs 70 pounds because it has capacitors the size of Coke cans which sound AMAZING, I couldn't say "YES!!! It's no bother!" fast enough :-). The size and weight of those capacitors is another example of how "Physics Matter" in audio.
> he was able to go to a specialized store where they let him test a myriad of speakers so he could customize the sound "flavor"
Many people aren't aware that "auditioning" speakers in a showroom is almost pointless. The size, proportions and shape of a room can profoundly change the sound of speakers. And the way it changes is also quite counter-intuitive due to how acoustic reflections and standing waves can cause even an 8-inch difference in ceiling height or room width to turn "Amazing" sounding speakers into "Mediocre". Speaker designers use complex modeling software to simulate the exact shape of the resonating cavity inside a speaker because even minute differences can change the sound so much. One way to think about it is that your room is the final speaker and you're sitting inside the 'resonating cavity'. So yeah, it matters.
High-end audiophile stores have long allowed in-home auditions (not that I waste money at those places). But Best Buy type stores will let you return things and many budget audiophile-type, online-only discount speaker companies offer "in-home auditions". I bought my first decent 5.1 system from such an online place over 20 years ago now and I was stunned at how good they sounded for the price. Since speakers must be auditioned in the actual room anyway, the difference between potentially needing to rebox them and drive back to the store or driving to UPS is close to zero. Arguably, a pre-printed label drop-off at UPS is a lot faster than the return line at Best Buy or Magnolia.
In the last ten years esoteric "Speaker Quality" has become almost a non-factor. What I mean is, if we eliminate no-name speakers made solely to hit a dirt cheap price point at someplace like WalMart, and focus on any of the brands regularly mentioned in online forums like r/budgetaudiophile, Worrying about speaker "quality" is wasted effort and focus. Thanks to modern digital design tools and online audio communities quickly praising or dinging the good and bad, all the recommended options are surprisingly good these days. I'm certain that the difference between one decent 'budget audiophile recommended' brand and another for you matters far less than other things like getting enough wattage for your space and speaker placement - like sliding a sub over 10-inches so it's not creating a null standing wave at your listening point.
In recent years, I'm happily now in a place that I could afford just about any gear yet, when we recently built a vacation house, after testing several options, I used in-wall speakers from online-only discount outlet Monoprice. The forums were right. They were shockingly good and met the needs of the room perfectly. I could have easily spent five times more on speakers but any lift in quality would have been negligible.