I am not familiar with Luxman's line though I know they make very good equipment and you should feel confident that they will deliver superior sound quality so long as you like the sound profile they provide.

My experience is that the built in preamps that are part of DACs are inferior to a standalone. This may not be universally true but I have a PS Audio Directstream DAC which is a spectacular unit that has a preamp out. I compared it to my Ayre K-5xeMP and it didn't require more than a few seconds to tell that it was clearly inferior to the the Ayre pre.

The Ayre unit is not inexpensive so I swapped in an old Carver I have lying around just for poops and giggles and my 24 year old Carver sounded better. I have several good friends who have higher end and lower end gear from a variety of brands and we universally agree that we have yet to hear a preamp in a DAC that is quite up to the same level as a good standalone preamp. I won't say they don't exist or it isn't possible, just that we haven't heard one.

Dear bluenote64,

You made this post over a year ago so I'm not holding my breath for a reply, but I was wondering - did you go for the Luxman combination you were referring to or not? I only ask because I've had the DA-250 for a year and have just added the E-250 and an LP12 and am now thinking about power amps. I had really hoped that Luxman would have updated the M-200 to an M-250 by now but there's no sign of that happening, so I'm considering just getting an M-200 like you were.

How did it work out? Or did you opt for something else?

Kind regards,
Topher