Suggestions for a top flight streamer/Dac around the $2000 mark?

+1 Teac NT-505.

The Teac is a giant killer for $2k. Teac is parent company of Esoteric, regarded by many as the leader in digital technology.

Lots of Esoteric tech creep down into that $2k product. Virtually everyone on Agon or other forums who has gotten one raves about it


Dual monoural AK 4497 dacs, dual toroidal transformer, fully balanced and XLR outs, excellent analog output stage, full MQA support, dsd512, LUMIN software app, and on and on ....

That Matrix looks pretty nice. Not sure if it has dual toroidal power supply (didn’t see it in pics or specs) and ess vs ak personal preference I guess. Anyway, not here to argue but Dave keeps trolling me across threads.


OP asked for suggestions on $2k dac/streamers, so I gave my suggestion. 

Greg, I noticed an improvement in sound quality (and now never ever get dropouts) when I went from a longer cat6 Ethernet cable to a shorter cat7 cable with the Teac, so if you aren’t already at cat7 you might try that. I’m just using a cheap AmazonBasics Ethernet cable under $10

Cool, sorry didn’t mean to imply you were.
The neatl thing about dacs/streamers is how rapidly they’re advancing. Good time to be digital music listener

Enjoy the music!!  I’m hoping to listen to my system about 8 hrs tonight til 3am!!

Dude, so serious??  LOL!!  Chill out!  You must be a riot to have a beer with...

Audio Research integrated amp, Spendor D7, REL S5, MIT cables and XLR, Audio Art power. And the Teac NT-505 which is really really good, “Esoteric-lite”!! Add dual on-Board clocks and ability to add external 10G clock and Roon ready as additional features of this $2k product to my list above

jackd has owned LUMIN and Teac and kept the Teac and ditched the LUMIN.
Giant killer is a figure of speech Dave, LOL. Show me anything under $5k that has the features I listed for the Teac. The $2.3k LUMIN uses a dac chip that is older than the original iPhone, 13years!!

Still waiting for you to show me something under $5k that has all those features the Teac does ...

Yep, for sure. Since this is a $2k-ish thread (see title), can say that I currently own and regularly use 4 such products across different installations (Teac, marantz, Integra, Bluesound) and from my posts here you know my overwhelming favorite based on actual ownership and heavy use.