There definitely was a short period in college where I needed to spend money I barely had to upgrade my system. This was when CDs first came out. I could tell, when listening through my stereo (as compared to plugging my headphones into the CD player) that there was a ton of extra noise/distortion and most importantly, a very high noise level (audible hiss). Ended up having to go to Salvation Army to buy a $25 used receiver and the speaker store to buy a pair of $200 speakers before I got decent results. Even after that, I had no end of problems with the analog cable. it took a long time to switch to digital.

Nowadays I can get excellent audio quality watching good Youtube videos or streaming from my preferred music site (I only listen through headphones now).

I'm super glad I was able to get to the quality level I liked for fairly cheap.