I listened to KEF Blades at a Magnolia and I could not believe how disappointed I was. How could the flagship speakers (complete with odd duck styling) from such a renowned company sound so absolutely lifeless?! I wouldn’t buy them for any amount of money, let alone their actual MSRP.
I’ve actually owned and quickly sold R900’s as well, so maybe that brand is just not for me.
Underrated - I think they are universally liked but I’ll throw out Monitor Audio Silvers as one of the best values in HIFI, and Totem Hawks.
Personally I treat vinyl as a bit of a novelty. I’m genX, so old enough to have heard plenty of vinyl as a kid, but we grew up owning tapes and then CDs, so vinyl was “the thing that was replaced”, associated with our parents. And 99.9% of the experiences from exposure to vinyl was negative - you can’t take it to go (no car audio, no boombox audio), you can’t easily skip tracks, and if the record is physically compromised, you hear the pops and even worse, it skips. Most of us never considered vinyl as a viable option because the negatives far outweighed any sonic advantage.
Fast forward to now. I have a fantastic stereo and can afford a nice turntable,but I choose to have an entry level table basically for the novelty. I can put on a 180 grain record and play it for my peers, amd they can’t believe how good it sounds. Mostly because my generation all has the same memory, unless you were listening to a true hifi set up, vinyl kinda sucked.
My long winded point - some if us like vinyl for many if the reasons listed by others already, but when push come to shove, digital is the way we prefer.