You don't need super high-end equipment to hear subtle details in audio, you just need reasonably good headphones. A few hundred dollars worth of headphones will get you quality that would cost tens of thousands with speakers and the room treatment speakers need to perform at their best (digital room correction can make a good room sound great but it can't fix a bad one).
The same can be said about loudspeakers, a good set of loudspeakers is far more important than buying a super-expensive set of DACs, Pre and Power Amps.
