Not sure about price but this is the key aspect of owning a speaker set up.
When I started with speakers it was placement in room for bass and stereo width. But it really includes the ratio between absorbtion, diffusion, and reflection - ratio of speakers "into" the room vs listening position vs back wall, solidness of floor and walls vs sponginess. Aggressive EQ might seem to be a shortcut to nirvana, but, an overly reflective room might show up on paper as being 'flat' but be bedeviled by smearing.
Another thing that's a mess in most listening rooms (if you don't have a dedicated room you're likely nowhere close to having a good set up re: maximizing the room) is having a hulking stand/array of equipment between the speakers. OMG! Firstly lots of reflective surfaces right in the middle of the back of the soundstage? Ugh. I know we're all proud of our equipment, and its like a display case with your collectibles in it, but no. Equally bad is a turntable on the top of the same stand - unless the stand and table are very heavy sitting on a concrete floor they are acoustically active. On top of that if your table has a dust cover, that's more flimsy material being smacked by bass and going right to your cartridge.
Get your equipment away from your front wall - to a closet is ideal, or next to you (but slightly behind you). A long run of balanced cable or speaker wire is a lot less damaging to sound.
Ditch the wall to wall carpeting, go with scatter rugs of 3 x 4 or 4 x 5 in a checkerboard pattern. Buy up used ASC traps (bass full rounds for front corners, and 1/2 rounds for front wall), sound flags is another great product ASC makes for the midrange.
So, now that I've downsized away from my fully tricked out listening room, my speakers went from sounding like $7k to a crap room where they sound like $600. All of my headphones - even the two I don't like crucify them.
