Ive been upgrading my rigs over decades buying, selling for decades. From humble "hand me down" beginnings I have been through many different modestly priced set ups over the years, I enjoyed them. With each upgrade you realize the increase in performance, as your set up progresses in quality some upgrades have a bigger impact than others. There is a point of diminishing returns or a level at which upgrades do not make as big of an impact because you have reached a point of relatively good performance.
This point of "Good" performance will be different for each audiophiles journey but for me it came when i reached speaker performance of a certain level and that was a pair of old Ohm Walsh 2 (made in the 80's, I bought them in the 2010s) that i dropped off at Ohm to have restored. After hearing them at a friends house i knew i liked their overall character, Omni directional speakers are very life like. I ran my restored Walsh 2's with am inexpensive Denon home theater receiver and i was in heaven. After some time I ended up scoring an old Rotel Solid State integrated from the 90's and that when i hit "Good" performance, the veil was lifted, the bass was controlled the sound stage was wide and deep like ive never felt before in my own environment. Ive moved on from that set up but from that point each upgrade was enjoyable but did not have as big of am impact.
In short, you can have an enjoyable rig for less than $1,000 bucks.