I'd like to keep the DAC section under 300 if possible. While they pay me 100 a month here and cover a lot at the Academy, I'm still going to need money for books and such. Long story short, I'm trying to build an end-all be-all amp/DAC, etc, and I'm probably going to end up buying stuff and building them as they come in over the course of a year or a year and a half (probably finish my 2-degree cadet year at USAFA). Amp design's probably going to be the beta 22 with the accompanying sigma 22 PSU (going to get 2 of each and oversized heatsinks so I can power speakers). I'm going to design my own power on/power off board that'll trigger 4 5V, 10A contact-rated DPDT relays with a 5V power supply (from Welborne Labs). It'll turn the 2 amp boards, the DAC, and the remote controlled stepped attenuator (also from Welborne Labs) on simultaneously. The 5V power supply will also be used in the output selector board that I'm going to design (also uses a 5V, 10A DPDT relay). +5V will trigger speaker mode, and 0V will be headphone mode. My friend back in Jersey (well, was in Jersey, anyways until he went to California for college) had an old computer case he was willing to let me have to use as a case. Figured a computer case would be nice, since it's really spacious and has all those drive bays I could attach stuff to. Now, my justification for looking for a DAC on the "level" of the PPAv2 was that I wanted a pretty top-end DAC that could be integrated in this project. The justification for USB is that I'm going to be running music from the computer to the DAC.