Tee Squeeze box is very popular. Slim dievices is also selling a $2000 version called a Transporter.
There are not many reasonably priced stereo preamps.
How about a good to very very good preamp (look at Bryston's) with a DAC option so one could use a spidf from a squeeze box or computer audio server etc and have a very nice evening of quality music.
Price should less than $1500 with about $250 for the DAC.
Of course the next thing is a quality stereo amp.
See next post.
Joel