I find it really weird how many people spend too much time listening to the gear. I think what helped me when starting out, was always focusing on discovering new music. Only sad thing, is some really good albums are mastered like crap and hearing them on good hardware exposes them.

I'm also shocked at how some artists, like Kendrick Lamar, have exceptional sounding albums. Some smaller artists across the genre spectrum also do have well mastered records despite not being bankrolled by huge labels.