Boy oh boy, am I glad I have not gotten infected with the DIGITAL bug. Audiophiles have ALWAYS been pretty crazy dumping truckloads of money down a (perceived) 'making it better' path (they DID sell speaker cable for $100/ft even back then).
But DIGITAL brings the craze to a whole new level. Reading the 'atom splitting' (hair splitting was a thing of the analog times) discussions, aren't we 'missing the boat', 'barking up the wrong tree', 'not seeing the big picture'?
Granted, my 'listening ear' (i.e. critical skill level to judge performance) is not even close to what it was 40 years when we going down the deep end of audio performance improvements, but even with my current limited skill level, I am convinced that you get 10x the improvement for every Dollar spent on the ANALOG side of the sound chain (for example speaker, room, etc).
So if 'bang for buck' is in the discussion: think analog improvements first.