Given your budget, there are so many options. Conventional wisdom says to take the separate route which gives you complete flexibility with upgrades down the road. On the other hand, if you’re shopping in $15K range, you must look at DAC’s with streaming card or client are catching up to separates. They also gives you the flexibility to use an external streamer. Weiss is one of them, there are others like Bricasti, Merging Technologies and Grimm Audio. The performance of streaming in aforementioned brands gotten so good that external streamer like N200 will only yield marginal improvements. It is also worth pointing out, the DAC’s with onboard streaming client eliminates the need for a high quality USB, SPDIF/AES cables plus extra power cord.
Based on my experience of owning ultra high end separates- $37K retail, my recommendation would be to choose a manufacturer that has excelled at DAC tech. This is where you’re going to get the most return for your buck. I’m not saying source is not important but DAC performance carries more weight in my experience. I am a long time Aurender user and always owned separates but this new category of DAC first with onboard Streamer client is fast approaching the performance of separates. I ditched the separates and went with a very high resolution DAC that allows me to use Aurender via Ethernet and as a bonus has ROON Core + Renderer on board. No need to maintain separate NUC or laptop to run roon core. I get to enjoy both ROON and Aurender seamlessly over my network.
And lastly, streaming is not plug n play. Network optimization is just as important. More on that later once you’ve chosen your DAC and Streamer/Server.
This is a great time to jump into digital streaming, lots of excellent choices. My “Digital’ system is listed under my moniker. PM me if you wish to discuss further.