Amp with onboard dac or seperate dac (on a budget)

This is my first post on Stereophile !

I am shopping for an entirely new system. Right now my only audio source is a ipod connected to a pair on Sennheiser 555. I do enjoy music and I feel that investing a bit in a audio system would be rewarding.

I have a 2000$ budget for a DAC, an amp & speakers. The music is exclusively coming from a pc with, among other things, flac-encoded files.

I would really prefer to go for a cheap sound card with a toslink/spdif output and move the processing into either a dac or an amp with a dac.

Soliciting Cairn Fog v3 and Unico CD impressions

I'm considering replacing my Fog v3 with the Unico CD. The Cairn is very "musical" and being "in the music" is a good description most of the time. But, I know it places an unusual emphasis on certain parts. This drives me crazy when I "know" a song should sound different, e.g. the rhythm guitar should be further in the background.
I want another CDP with digital inputs and am very happy with my Unico SE integrated, which has put the Unico CD at the top of my list.

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