

I will always advocate for high-end headphones over speakers myself. Speakers that work and don’t sound absolutely horrible are good enough in my book.
I will say the thrift shop idea is smart. We got our floor speakers and receiver that way and I have no complaints. I’ll spend big bucks on speakers when I hit the lottery I never play.




Solid advice but it’s not really applicable to me in all honesty. My headphone listening station consists of an SL-1200mk3, a schiit jotunheim with internal phono card, and XLR balanced out Sennheiser HD800S. I also have a splitter hooked up to a sub if I really want to feel the bass on music that relies on it.
I don’t listen to music with other people generally, and if I do it’s not in a critical listening sense so my PC speakers or the downstairs thrift store technics floor speakers are good enough. I also don’t ever want to upgrade, and given my tastes that means I need to set aside a significant amount of money at the start.