I agree, there was no mention of price but of course that's unreasonable. That said, I just look at the SMSL website and the options for DAC/AMPS are quite limited for some reason they seem to focus on separates, on that regard there seem to be better range of choices at Topping. Me personally, I don't own a stack but I find that quite limited. I like to have both headphone capability and feed to my powered speaker at desktop. In this config The amp don't have output and takes the XLR outs from the DAC. Is it confirmed that both the rca outs and XLR outs are active at the same time? In all case it seams a little less convenient but I'd have to see a bit more of the routing structure. I personally for desktop have a semi pro audio interface by Audient and it's simple, the outputs for the speakers, the Jack for headphones, both independent level easy to mute one while using the other. I purchased a separate headphone amp a while back, the Drop THX 789, and its just sitting there not being used because of the convenience factor. It's not practical in feeding the powered speakers.