Thank you all!
I guess I must've insisted a little too much on the number of boxes ... Main point for me was/is I am curious about how many devices we can connect to each others in our search for great music and wonder what is the marginal benefice of them (if any) vs one box.
And I arrived to the conclusion that I can't comprehend this without being with someone in a room showing me what's what (limited bandwidth on my part, not lack of clarity here) or getting a bunch of stuffs and trying them out.
The options we now have for HiFi systems, from least amount of devices to more:
Computer in a speaker type thing
DAC + Active speakers
AVR + Passive speakers
Dac + Amp + Passive speakers
If I was wiser, given my neuroticism, I would go with an everything in one option. Before coming here I was actually strongly considering the Q Acoustics M20. Certainly not as good as the Kef but I am weary of spending above 1k$ in a all in one system. Doesnt sound as good value to me as 'regular' active speakers or passive ones. My worries are probably not warranted but they are here.
Anyways, I moved on from that simple, elegant and probably good enough solution.
Active speakers I think I would need another type of budget to get what I can have from the Revel. Again, no real clue, only point of reference is reading threads here and trying to decipher spec sheets that I can't stay concentrated on for long enough to actually understand. What I am seeing is that comparing Genelecs vs Revel + amp, I can have bigger speakers for a given budget with Revel, so I chose passive for this set up.
Back to where I was when I started this thread, my mind is set on passive speakers and on the Revel M106 in particular. By all accounts, they sounds like good speakers and I am sure they will be good enough for me. At some point, peace of mind becomes more important than making sure I am making the absolute best use of my hard won $. If I end up not liking how they sound, I ll go explore the others in that price range (Kef3 and Ascend Acoustics Sierra-LX).
Thanks for breaking things down for me,
Marc v E !
After checking cost of things, difficulty of implementation, size and look of devices and mostly wanting to hear music (and play with how to make speakers sound good in my space) I am done researching. I'll come back when my system is in place to report back.