Rodney, there isn't any magic in "separates"; putting stuff in two or three boxes instead of one and charging a lot more doesn't work miracles. The cost-effective and sensible buy for most applications is a receiver at a relatively moderate cost. If you want to keep the present separate amplifier, using a receiver as a pre-pro works just as well as a separate pre-pro, although you're not taking advantage of the amplifier sections that you've paid for. As Alan and others have pointed out, DACs are now a mature technology and you can be confident that the ones in a receiver you buy are good enough to achieve audibly flawless converting.
