@hilde45 You absolutely nailed it about room acoustics. I recently learned this lesson bringing home a $15k pair of speakers to upgrade my modest Martin Logan Mission 40's only to find the 'upgrade' sounded absolutely awful within my room. If anything, it proved the importance of room treatment and the fact that you can get great 'affordable' sound!
Enjoying "Affordable" Equipment
Having never owned a direct drive turntable, curiosity motivated a purchase of a Technics SL-1200GR2. I hooked it up to a stock Denon DL-103. Setup was fun and easy, no protractor required. Easy to understand tonearm height, VTF and anti-skate setup. All metrics were done to spec and VTF was exact without using a digital force gauge except to check my work.
After a brief warm-up the sound opened up and I say without reservation, it's been a while since I've enjoyed listening to vinyl this much. I am playing all my favorites; good recordings of original releases are truly special. More importantly, the price was affordable by today's standards.
The rest of the chain contains a Rhea Eclipse phono preamp, Kell Phantom preamp, Krell EVO 402e with all balanced interconnects and Harbeth 40.2 monitors.
I posted this simply to share an awesome experience provided by our great hobby and hoping to avoid the controversial topics often found on this forum. Thank you!