DAC's Streamer and Preamps

@brbrock there is no blanket answer here. Depends on design and implementation. And it all boils down to your budget.

A high end 3 in one unit will beat out cheap separates. So what price range are you looking to stay in?

Since starting down the digital source road, having separates enabled me to grow my system while learning more about each digital process and how to optimize those.  However, all that said, times are different, the playback of digital music files is a more mature process, and the gear is better.  If simplicity is important to you, one piece you may want to look into is the Meitner MA3i DAC which also streams and adjusts volume and, which, at a list price of $11.5K, is said to deliver a good portion of the sound qualities of the upper EMM Labs offerings costing over $30K, while leaning to the musical side of playback. The display also looks really good. (review with measurements)

Great advice from @elliottbnewcombjr ...

It never hurts to start with an inexpensive piece that sounds surprisingly nice, 'good enough' to start, for future emergencies, loan to friends .... and you have it to compare/prove something you try sounds better.

I've owned multiple DACs. They all sound different. You may have a preference for a cheap one over an expensive one. I sold a $6k DAC because I liked an $1800 DAC better. I now use an all-in-one that I love.

three of my favorite units are the msb analog dac, the weiss 501 and chord hugo tt2/m-scaler combo.... they all have volume control capability for their analog outs, which allow them to directly drive the power amp, the first two have built in streamers too  (the msb even has an additional analog input for, say, phono!)

it is wonderful to have that flexibility, a real boon to system building -- there are enough boxes already in the digital front end to get the streamed feed nice and clean

not to say there aren’t some instances where a great pre doesn’t add some additional musicality -- still keep my c-j and arc tube linestages around for that reason (though i must admit they haven’t been hooked up for quite a while)

Separate DAC's are a marketing gimmick. Just get a nice preamp with onboard DAC chips. Much shorter signal path with one less wall wart to plug in. Notice also chips converting analog to digital are the price of a bag of oranges. It is not a difficult electronic function.