I would second the Playback Designs MPD-3. I have owned a Wadia 581i, McIntosh MDA1000, Audio Research DAC8 and side by side had a Berkeley that was replaced by the Playback Designs. The MPD-3 is absolutely the smoothest, most analog like DAC I have experienced and I would further comment that a prior poster describing it as analytical is surprising and most certainly a result of somewhere else in the chain of his demo system. The Audio Research DAC8 is a fine DAC as are the others I have personally owned listed above however I believe in my system there was a very clear difference. In all fairness, I had the DAC8 when I had Shindo amplification and the Berkeley and Playback Designs I had switched to VAC amplification.
The Playback Designs unit sounded great right out of the box but has broken in (I estimate I have 4-500 hours) VERY nicely. The deep bass has been the real surprise for me. The ability to handle every sample rate commercially available is a value ad.....if this DAC was limited to 24/96 it would still be my DAC of choice in this price range. I use its DSD capabilities to play back archived vinyl....simply sublime.
The Playback Designs unit sounded great right out of the box but has broken in (I estimate I have 4-500 hours) VERY nicely. The deep bass has been the real surprise for me. The ability to handle every sample rate commercially available is a value ad.....if this DAC was limited to 24/96 it would still be my DAC of choice in this price range. I use its DSD capabilities to play back archived vinyl....simply sublime.