Audacious 4.3 Beta Adds PipeWire Plugin, Restores GTK3 + Ships Mature Qt6 Support

[Anux]

Heck there are even portable Hi-Res DACs and amps to be bought, not that I can afford most of them.

I'm not sure one would need expensive DACs or amps. Even the cheap china stuff is more than enough since around year 2000. One would need a super expensive headphone and a totally quiet listening room to maybe hear some difference, nothing that would fit the usecase of portable audiogear.
Deactivating EQ and other sound processing is often the much bigger impact for a clear sound. And somewhat decent headphones ofcourse.

Good speakers are cheaper than ever, even for cars, and there are even portable speaker setups worth hearing.

There I can't agree, good speakers are the only thing in your audio chain that is really expensive. The market is flooded with small plastic speakers that can hardly play frequencies below 100 Hz and those that can don't have any clarity or enough headroom.

For me, good speakers start around 500€ (stereo pair) the equipment to sufficiently drive them (player, amp) will cost less then 100€. Ofcourse there are still small improvements with > 3000€ speakers but I find it hardly worth the price increase (they make more sense in an acoustically treated studio).

Whatever your audio setup is, the acoustic transducer is the hardest part and therefore the most expensive (and also has the most influence in sound quality).