I will admit that a decent sound bar does sound pretty good out of the box.
But nothing beats a well-tuned "classic" home theater system though. It takes a bit of effort, but you can get great sound of it with decent components (don't confuse quality with cost, which is very easy to do in the audio world). But it's definitely not usually plug and play. Whereas a good sound bar is gonna sound good out of the box and you just plug it in.
I just went through the same exercise in my Bronco. Took a lot of effort and a little bit of money, but finally got to a point where I think it sounds not just good, but great.
