Disagree, you can get excellent sound with little money and make it as expensive as you want.
E30, L30 is cheap but not colored.
When this is not your thing color the headphones or the signal sent to the DAC.
Why do you think I'm getting L30? I don't think it's crap. In fact I expect to be pleasantly surprised by it. Could I afford more "refined" amp? Sure. And if I do, I'll probably still keep L30. First I want to play with it a little and eventually it will be part of my bedroom rig where space saving components are a must. As to price to performance (return on your investment) ratio.....well, there is a difference. Aside from performance, there's a factor of build quality, long term reliability, human interaction with people directly behind the product, warranty etc. I know that for some those things don't matter but for me it does matter. And on number of occasions I have been taken care of by people who stood behind their product. Often, many years after warranty expired or component that have been sold to fellow enthusiast.
Did performance of "budget" component improved over the years? Absolutely. Especially in digital and streaming domain. So yeah, you can be perfectly happy without spending a little fortune and get extremely satisfying, musical experience. Color or not, if you enjoy it then that's all that matters.