“It seems most people will never get that audio is not about the gear pieces but about how to learn to listen...”. IMO, if you know how to listen, you would know that the better equipment makes a bigger difference in sound quality! It’s like taking a Honda accord to the racetrack. Even if you are the best driver in the world, you will not beat a rookie in a F1 car.
If you have a pioneer receiver, I don’t care how you listen, the sound quality will be crap. If you truly know how to listen, you will hear differences in cables, room treatment, different price ranges of amps, dacs, preamps, etc… But hey, if you can’t hear the difference between entry level equipment and the better higher end equipment, that’s cool, you just saved yourself some money. Me, I’ll spend the money on better equipment to get the best sq I can for the money invested, same goes for cars, homes, appliances, we’ll just everything