I feel your pain weeding through all this, but I don’t think doing the combo thing is a good idea longer term as both streamer and DAC technologies evolve at the pace they are. I’d suggest going with a good streamer like the Pro-Ject Streambox S2 Ultra and a nice DAC such as the Musician Pegasus R2R DAC (just as one option) and I think you’ll be very happy for $2k all in with no more headaches necessary. I own the Pegasus and consider it to be an upgrade from the more common delta-sigma DACs in terms of flow and musicality with no lack of detail or dynamics. Here’s a review I think is pretty spot on FYI.
https://soundnews.net/sources/dacs/musician-audio-pegasus-r2r-dac-review/
Hope this helps, and best of luck.