The two I have been looking at myself in similar bracket
Jeff Rowland Aeris - At the top end of your budget, but does the warm, holographic sound that is trademark of JR products. Takes pretty much all modern inputs (USB, toslink, spidif) but does not do DSD/SACD type sample rates. They seem to market it heavily on its anti-jitter technology and dual clock circuitry. I am not so into the technicals myself, I would just say it sounds good and worth an audition. I auditioned this on Avalon and JBL speakers. Matching Rowland front-end.
Playback Designs MPD3 - Analytical and transparent presentation, and comfortably below your budget. This machine does DSD if that matters to you, and seems more the latest and greatest 'gadget' buy in terms of its signal processing capabilities. Auditioned with ATC and Revel speakers. Levinson gear for other front-end. The more advanced processing (DSD) capabililities make it a better future-proofing choice?
If it helps, to give you some perpective, I was not impressed by the DAC offerings from Linn, Weiss, and Gamut. Wadia and Esoteric were quite decent but did not really get me itching.
Ones I am interested to hear but have not yet are Boulder and Neodio
Jeff Rowland Aeris - At the top end of your budget, but does the warm, holographic sound that is trademark of JR products. Takes pretty much all modern inputs (USB, toslink, spidif) but does not do DSD/SACD type sample rates. They seem to market it heavily on its anti-jitter technology and dual clock circuitry. I am not so into the technicals myself, I would just say it sounds good and worth an audition. I auditioned this on Avalon and JBL speakers. Matching Rowland front-end.
Playback Designs MPD3 - Analytical and transparent presentation, and comfortably below your budget. This machine does DSD if that matters to you, and seems more the latest and greatest 'gadget' buy in terms of its signal processing capabilities. Auditioned with ATC and Revel speakers. Levinson gear for other front-end. The more advanced processing (DSD) capabililities make it a better future-proofing choice?
If it helps, to give you some perpective, I was not impressed by the DAC offerings from Linn, Weiss, and Gamut. Wadia and Esoteric were quite decent but did not really get me itching.
Ones I am interested to hear but have not yet are Boulder and Neodio