I think you have a solid plan for a setup that will satisfy your ears.
 
I'm not sure what setup you have but you would still require some form of a dac. From the information regarding active monitors the benefits of an active monitor is that you can amplify the signal after the cross over IIRC. This eases the internal amplifier because it does not have to deal with capacitors and inductors.
 
The thing about monitors for production is that they should be neutral. This may detract the chillout musical enjoyment from a warm/laid back speaker. Listening to a hardcore studio monitor can possibly become analytical or fatiguing after a longer duration of listening time. One must recall the listening period of music in a studio. There are many instances where something will sound fantastic for 20 minutes + but as time goes on your ears start to fatigue on you. In a studio the pleasing overtones of a tube system or warm amplifier adds to the music but for a studio it's meant to manipulate technical side of music. A friend of mine was describing how he had a setup as they were in the studio mixing their music.
 
iirc many old school studios used a yamaha speaker as a reference speaker IIRC.
 
If your going to build slowly I'd suggest simplicity in a higher end integrated amp and external dac running passive speakers. This would probably be more suited for musical enjoyment and not concentrating on the analysis of music. 
 
There's different approaches for your preference