On the value side, I totally agree. Early 2000 offerings were just... sad, partly due to the over-digitalization (I own a Marantz from that time, which forces many optimizations, Dolby support and similar, but in the end sounds considerably worse than its cheaper predecessors).

For how I see it, in the last year there has been a huge increase of sound quality over price, probably partly due to the growing Chi-Fi competition (especially on headphones).

I bought some sad Sennheiser IEMs in 2015 for around €160, and in 2022 they sound like garbage compared to some €40 offerings from China IEM brands (KZ, TRN, ... whatever).

Also, awareness of Bluetooth and wireless sound quality has thankfully brought to something beyond extremely expensive devices that just sounded like excessive DSP and compression.