For me it is and always seems to be amp-speaker synergy and noise in the phono playback. I am learning a lot on this forum and it has helped tremendously! It seems when you match equipment it is so much easier. I purchased a decent phono stage finally with its matching power supply and it transformed my turntable/ cartridge playback (no noise) simply amazing. I now keep my amp and preamp choices to the same brand and it is getting better for me. I never had a problem with wattage because I never could afford a powerful amplifier. Now I have seen how efficient well made and designed speakers can play with much less wattage. I will say for a big set of speakers that are not Klipsch more power is pretty amazing in sound. The bass comes out and is powerful and no sub needed. So tight and great sounding.
Happen to you? Gear chasing because the fundamentals were wrong.
Gear chasing and swapping can be a real joy or a real pain.
The search for "better" or just the search for the "right fit" or sound.
One thing I've learned (with some difficulty) is that there are some fundamentals which have to be in place if anything else is going to be accurately assessed.
Of these, amp-speaker synergy and room acoustics were the most obvious factors I neglected. Noise and isolation were also missed as critical, early on. I blamed components which really were not the cause or the solution to the situation because I was missing the fundamentals.
I'm curious to hear anecdotes of your discovery.
What fundamental did you fail to pay attention to which caused you to chase gear unnecessarily?
Hopefully, these stories will be instructive, especially for newer audiophiles.