Beginner Question

[bluesman]

I agree completely with what's already been posted.  Your equipment choices are excellent.  But if I understand you correctly, you also asked if you're making a mistake with 2 channels.  I strongly suggest that you use your budget for a really good 2 channel system and get used to fine sound in stereo before considering MC.  Multichannel audio is really fine and really fun, but I would not compromise SQ to get more channels.  With the latest crop of MC "integrators" (e.g. the MiniDSP UDIO8) and DACs (e.g. the ESI Gigaport), you can easily add more channels of equal quality when you're ready.

 

On the other hand, if you're already on the fence about stereo vs MC, you could start with a UDIO8, a pair of less expensive but still very good 2 channel DACs (e.g. Topping, SMSL, iFi etc), and 4 8030s for about the same total outlay as the Benchmark + 2 Genelecs. 

 

A third MC alternative with fine SQ at lower cost is an ESI Gigaport eX and 4 Genelecs.  The Benchmark 3 is a 192k device as I recall, and it "only" does DSD64.  So you're not losing much with the ESI, which is also a 24/192 device but does not do DSD64.  I haven't compared the Benchmark with the ESI for SQ and suspect that the ESI's a tiny bit behind - but probably not by much.