Welcome.
My advice to audio newbies is to learn about music, find your audio attribute preferences, learn about room acoustics, and then pick a wide variety of your favorite music and audition up to 4 setups per day maximum (ears/mind can easily overload). And take notes to force yourself to really listen and because aural memory is not very reliable. And as per my moniker, don't under estimate the importance of the room (like 90% of audiophiles do).
Pick speakers to fit the room (or headphones if you don't have a decent room). While I believe that true audiophile reproduction requires full frequency response, bass can be very expensive and fraught with problems. Nowadays good audio need not cost a ton or be complicated. Example: add a $200 Meridian Explorer 2 DAC to your laptop for a source and use a pair of $260 JBL LSR 305 active speakers (current street prices) with stands and your done for an average/small sized room or desktop. Instead of buying $$$$$ worth of albums, spend $20/month for a subscription to Tidal (CD quality music service that has millions of albums).
