Great work on your project! I'm curious though as to why you're looking to replace the DACs on your sound card with an external DAC. Is there something you find deficient in the M-Audio 192? If you go with a CD player with digital input, the interface will likely be S/PDIF and may not transfer hi-rez content (at least 88.2kHz/24-bit) and will definitely be only 2-channel.

It's also interesting that you're dissatisfied with the UI offered by Foobar and would like to see better ability to build searches based on available metadata. This seems to be a common complaint for those of us who enjoy classical music. I think Olive did a fantastic job on their UI, but, unfortunately, they do not offer a player with that UI as a separate product.