Some update:
I feel some people here would say I “went dark without disclosing his 'final answer'”
. It might as well seem so, I guess..
Like I said earlier in this thread, I plan for this purchase in the next couple of months, so I’m not hard pressed to take rushed decisions, I just want to make up my mind the best I can until then.
On the other hand, in the rushed decisions dept…., I stumbled upon the last piece of Topping D10s DAC in stock in my country that I was able to find and I felt it would be foolish from me not to snatch it, at a modest discount. So I did, and today I expect delivery.
It sure is as much as I would ever allow myself to spend on a separate DAC and it won’t go unused either way, since, if things turn in a different way for the Wharfedales setup, I also have a pair of active speakers in a secondary location that would make great use of the Topping DAC + Pi combo for streaming music.
Now, some (Hanz?) say the PI 3b+ has noisy USB output (if used as transport for music to an external DAC such as the Topping), probably since the USB and the Ethernet use a common bus, and the PI 4 would then be a better option, but since the PI 4 seems to experience a great shortage these days and I do have a PI 3b+ laying around, I’ll sattle with this for the moment.
As for the Wharfedales, I guess the addition of the Topping would not hurt either way, since now I feel less pressed to go for an amp+streamer combo such as the Yamaha R-N series, but even if I do, the Topping won’t be a step down from the ESS9006as in the 803d. Plus, I’m also considering a slow development on the separates setup including a miniDSP 2x4, which some of you guys kindly recommended here, which would then render the YMH 803d useless. So I guess I’m hoping for a win-win here, in the sense that now I have options.