Not sure you are correct that discrete DAC's look dated.
If you look at the trend among really expensive DAC's from the likes of MSB, DCS etc. they are now doing discrete DAC's.
Also read a few reviews of a more price friendly discrete DAC the HoloAudio or a few HQ player threads about the same.
Then it looks like the smart money is on discrete DAC's
And John is adding transformers to his discrete design for attenuation, which sounds really smart to me!
P.S. having the streamer integrated is also a really smart move and puts it at the cutting edge.