You reduce reality to black and white... Those who are obsessed by sound and those who listen to music...Reality is not black and white only....
Your frustrating experience in the past come from a lack of acoustic knowledge and from the conditioning marketing ploy who convinced us consumers that only the gear price level and the money can give us satisfaction...I know because i was thinking like that 10 years ago....
The truth is we can create audiophile experience at peanuts cost but NOT without acoustic and psycho-acoustic basic knowledge...
It is my experience with a 500 bucks system, in an acoustically controlled room for sure, this system would be sell normally 2000 bucks today...it is not big money...
Upgraditis come from lack of money to buy a good or satisfying component and /or from basic acoustic ignorance in most of the cases... This could be transformed in a neurosis in some case yes...
Acoustic science can treat this neurosis....
Listening music dont need good sound to be an ecstasy anyway, i remember listening Bach in ecstay in horrible sound condition, but it is very simple to double the ecstasy modulo acoustic experiments...
I fell so far into the rabbit hole of audio, I had to dig myself to the other side. Thousands of dollars and countless tedium-addled hours later, I MIGHT finally be at where I used to be. I can’t say my quality of life improved choosing to indulge in such minutiae. It’s been interesting and at times extremely rewarding, but I can’t say with full conviction it was worth it.
I’m happy when I hear about people enjoying the wonders of music neurosis-free