Why are we still talking DAC when amp is hooked into pre outs of a receiver? I've been on the merry go round of sound sucking because of this. an avr job is digital, HT, playstation, cable and when i went with a pre with HT bypass sound changed drastically. I do use an external DAC to run high rez files and its only an Arcam ir dac 2. once i get the funds I'll get rid of the Dac and get an Oppo Exemplar all in one but this is a 5k player. anyway the amp running into the Avr needs to be addressed first or nothing is really going to change.