Standalone DAC upgrade from onboard integrated

Given its price and that it also has a DAC and phono input I wouldn’t think the M6si would have a very good DAC, and reading the Soundstage review of the M6si certainly underscored that thought as it was pretty awful and only does 24/96 on top of it.  It’s hard to imagine a Cyan 2, Gustard R26, or Denafrips Pontus 15th among others wouldn’t be a significant step up from the DAC in your amp, but being able to return it would be nice because you never know til you try.  Or buy used so you can resell with little/no loss, but either way it shouldn’t be hard to get a meaningful improvement.  Hope this helps, and best of luck. 

I absolutely love my cyan 2. Fantastic upgrade from the ess dac in my eversolo A6. 

I would take a look at the streamer (node) in this chain.  It is ok, on par or equal at most to the DAC in the integrated.  An upgraded streamer will make an improvement now, and pave the way for a nicer DAC as describe above.  I feel any upgrade should make a significant improvement; be wary of lateral changes.

Interesting as a friend of mine has done the same thing. He bought my Chord Qutest as a stand alone DAC to pair with his MS6i. I must admit after a listening session we concluded it made quite a difference. The MS6i is one hell of an amp only let down by the internal DAC. Also once you upgrade the DAC then other components like the streamer become the weak link. We also used my Diretta streamer to play local files and Qobuz via MPD and upmpdcli  and Roon. Then you started to see what the system was capable of. Onwards and upwards.

I think the Denafrips Pontus 15th is a real contender here. I love mine, and it made a very noticeable difference in my streaming SQ. It’s an improvement over the DA2 in my McIntosh C2800, so pretty sure it’ll better that Burr Brown. And I’d say a streamer upgrade could be on the table, but definitely DAC first.