Back in the late 70's, I assembled what for the times was a pretty decent system.
Not state of the art but it was what I could afford at the time. I had a Yamaha CR2020 receiver, ADS L810 ii speakers and a Denon DP790 turntable.
The turntable and some Stax headphones were acquired at a fire sale. Later added a Sony 3 head tape deck and put a Grace cartridge on the Denon since the Yamaha had a MC input. It was a very satisfying system at the time but as some have mentioned, relying on hearing memory is not reliable.
I still have the CR2020 in storage and gave the speakers to my little brother. currently live with a very modest system, Yamaha, KEF ,Technics TT and a Sony CD/DVD player. For "serious" listening, I Run Amazon Ultra hd from a Dell precision desktop through a JDS DAC and amp to HiFi man Ananda or Sennheiser 600 series headphones. Now living in an Audiophile dealer desert, I can't really compare to newer high end stuff. Probably wouldn't matter as my mid 70 yo ears no longer discern the difference.