Author and scientist Michael Pollan makes a similar argument about food. We need to figure out what to eat to be healthy, but reducing everything down to "nutrients" and then trying to build back up from that is (a) confusing people, (b) leading to endless debates (which nutrient, how much, etc.) and the end result is (c) to obliterate the traditions we enjoy with food and the sheer pleasure it.
When I read the passage below and sub in "audio measurements" for "nutrients" and "music" for "food," I see a very close parallel between the audio debate and the food debate. Here’s Pollan:
"Nutritionism by and large takes the Western diet as a given, seeking to moderate its most deleterious effects by isolating the bad nutrients in it — things like fat, sugar, salt — and encouraging the public and the food industry to limit them. But after several decades of nutrient-based health advice, rates of cancer and heart disease in the U.S. have declined only slightly (mortality from heart disease is down since the ’50s, but this is mainly because of improved treatment), and rates of obesity and diabetes have soared."
"No one likes to admit that his or her best efforts at understanding and solving a problem have actually made the problem worse, but that’s exactly what has happened in the case of nutritionism. Scientists operating with the best of intentions, using the best tools at their disposal, have taught us to look at food in a way that has diminished our pleasure in eating it while doing little or nothing to improve our health. Perhaps what we need now is a broader, less reductive view of what food is, one that is at once more ecological and cultural. What would happen, for example, if we were to start thinking about food as less of a thing and more of a relationship?"
https://michaelpollan.com/articles-archive/unhappy-meals/