> While I don't disagree, I find that small speakers are dramatically better today than they were even 15 years ago.

Then why is what comes out from my "modern" soundbar so crappy compared to the one I bought 15 years ago?

I had to retire my ancient soundbar because it had Bluetooth without security and would regularly pump out 100db of some show that our neighbors were watching at random times.

However, the sound quality was vastly better than any soundbar I can buy now--even my wife complained about the soundbars we tried--they were that obviously worse. I had to suck it up and buy a full blown sound system to match a stupid cheap-ass JBL soundbar from 15 years ago.

JBL is unfortunately one of the brands that people buy nowadays and think of as "good". Well already was a thing 8 years ago... Please do not buy JBL nowadays. Its crap made for being thrown away after a few years. Real speakers are repairable usually. The expensive ones we sold even had 70 year - lifetime warranty. Its true that old speakers often have really good sound though. A lot of it is mechanical which didn't change a lot in the last decades. Modern speakers have electronic shenanigans that might work, but doesn't provide a noticeable difference in my opinion. Except for noise canceling.

No argument. All the "modern" JBL soundbars were just as crappy as the rest of the "modern" soundbars.

I remember buying that soundbar (back at Fry's!) and all the soundbars were pretty much just as good (well, the Bose ones were garbage and overpriced, but let's not get started about that ...). They weren't audiophile quality, but they were good enough that an amateur like my wife really couldn't tell much difference.

What the hell happened that caused soundbars to go to shit?

Soundbars in the past were a niche market for people with expensive Plasma screens so they had to appeal to that group.

Soundbars today are a cheap addition to make up for the horrible sound on everyone's cheap $300 LCD 65 inch TV that in addition to horrible sound looks worse at 4k than the 720 Plasma did.