Hello guys. First of fall let me say i'm a terrible newbie about most of i'll be speaking about in this thread, even if I've invested a good amount of time reading on the subject. I've been advised to post here about my doubts by a friend and I did read some of the forum content, being very pleased by the warm and supportive atmosphere. Hope you can bear with me as well!

After a long apathy in terms of sound quality investing, it's time to make some upgrades. My current gear:

- headphones: Akg k-501
- integrated amp: luxman a-225
- mission 733
- marantz 72se mkii
- terratec dmx fire (r.i.p. in windows 7 64 - no driver support anymore)

75% of my music is coming through my headphones though, mostly from a big Flac library. I do still want to maintain a good system out of my headphones, nonetheless.

My plan would be to buy a Dac to refine the signal through the luxman, and maybe to boost a bit my cd player(?) (if the transporter from dac is better) but I'm still worried with two other things

1. Provide some good amplification to my cans
2. Think of a good soundcard to (very) amateur music production, maybe linking that sound card with the dac via spdif.

I heard wonders of beresford caiman and i'm pretty much leaned to go for it, just still considering nforce icon hdp because of headphone amplifier, even if I did read somewhere in this forum that caiman should probably sound alright with my akg.

I'm not sure you guys can help me that much about the sound card choice, but that's where most of my doubts pop up. I see a lot of people work their caiman with a squeezebox but I definitely want to make it through a decent amateur musician-like sound card.

Final question that should probably be the first:

This investment seems logic between 500-700 dollars taking into account my current gear or am I not grasping something fundamental that makes all this a mindless gibbering?

Thanks in advance for your time, guys!