I've had an Altair for over two years and I'm extremely happy with it. It's not supposed to be as good as Auralic's separate units, but it's awfully close and I doubt I could tell any difference. Set up was easy and sound wise you can adjust the dac's filters to your preferences. Personally, I like the idea of a streamer/dac combo where you do not need an extra cable and the two units are designed to compliment each other. With the older Altair, you can always add a different dac in the future if you like to 'upgrade' often. However, there is not much need to. I don't think the new Altair G1 has a digital output to add a dac. A used Lumin T1 would be a good choice also, but it's a bit more expensive.