My situation was the reverse situation of most people here...
I had no budget...
My only way to had an audiophile experience , once i settle on basic synergetical gear pieces, was to study and experiment with acoustic , not only with passive material treatment but modification of the room physically and with Helmholtz tuned resonators grid and distribution and location ...This opened my eyes about what is sound ... Nope, it does not come from the gear but THROUGH the gear from some acoustic parameters chosen by the recording engineer of some album and the "sound" then comes TRANSLATED acoustically in my speakers/room/ears by my brain ...
Most people superstitiously believe as markeying indulge them to believe that amplifier or dac or speakers alone created the sound ... The costlier it is, the better it is as a motto ... This is romance marketing not science nor my experience ... Now for sure the gear choices matter a lot... But Acoustics and psychoacoustics rule ...
I repeated that and people are annoyed because most people are as i am right now limited in my room design...Happily when i was not so limited i learned not only how to hear better but the basic ... this truth is useless for half people because they feel captive in a living room with if not children a wife and they cannot really experiment nor understand the impactful scope of acoustic ...
I’m in the same camp with you on the "acoustics first" approach. Sometimes you have to work with what you have in front of you. We are involved in service and performance mods and bring up the subject of acoustics in every encounter. I think an element of the pushback is an unwillingness to change the decor in the room. Some of it is that acoustical panels are boring. They just hang on the wall and look at you. Not nearly as engaging as new gear, or "hot rodded" old gear.