I’m with onhwy61 - don’t discount the positives of a fully integrated unit too quickly.
Ironically, someone above who voted for going with separate units also pointed out that good inexpensive dacs are so easily available, which actually makes the point: good dacs today are like squirrels, they’re all over the place, and they don’t require that you spend $2000 to get one. So if someone like Hegel, or Parasound, or Peachtree, or many others are willing to give you one of those inexpensive good dacs as a bonus with your integrated amp, and save you space, the cost of extra cables, etc. why wouldn’t you take advantage of these combinations of great modern technology? They're not stuffing these units with poor dacs - many use ESS's best reference 9018 chip. If they're going out of their way to make your life easier, and give you everything you want in one box, why snub the offer and make things more complicated than they need to be?
Look at it this way - if someone could easily make the case that you can’t get good sound without spending $5000 on a dac, but none of the integrateds came with a dac that good, then you’d have your answer...you’d be forced to buy separates. But that’s not the world of dacs today - you can get great sound from a $300 dac today. So why go nuts sourcing something like that separately, when integrateds are offering that same quality built-in?
