People claim that is on a "audiofile" level. But based on what exactly?
And I never tried to prove that the HP doesn't sound great. It's just on par with it's direct competitors. Nothing more and nothing less.
And I never listened to the HP in store. It's useless because I don't have Apple Music. And the store is not representative compared to my living room. There is one way to figure out if the HP gives the best audio for you (or anyone else) and that is to go to a audio specialized shop. Recreate your room as close as possible (size, furniture, floor type etc) select several speakers within your budget and use the same audio input for all the speakers. Switch quickly within a song and compare the sound profile. Try to compare different music genres.
Then you can say is the HP (or a competitor) is best for you. Altough it would be a challenge to create this setup since the HP can only use Apple Music for high quality input.... And it doesn't have any line in. So it just works... Except when it doesn't