My rule of thumb is choose the very best at your investment level and ~ $Streamer = $DAC = $Preamp (yes, separate) =$Amp.
@ghdprentice more modern high end DACs include a preamp section now. The volume control in some of these units rivals what an equally priced preamp can do. Some of these DACs also include very competitive network cards for streaming (as a roon end point for example). You would really need to dish out some serious dough to improve on the performance of these units. Unless you have multiple sources you might not actually need a preamp. Another use case for a preamp is if you wanted to add tubes to the chain.
