Best Bang for your Buck DAC ?

Musical Fidelity V90 DAC plus an S-Booster power supply to replace the wall wart sounds really good for the price. 

Another very happy Denafrips Ares II owner here, very good build quality, balanced XLR’s, r2r and there is a reason why you don’t see them on the second hand market. 

What is the highest resolution you will be listening to? If you don’t listen to hi-res beyond 96kHz/24bit, then there are some terrific deals to be found in older, higher end DACs (e.g., Ayre, Esoteric, Benchmark, Meitner, etc.) as people upgrade their gear.

You might check out these guys:  The review below is for a Gustard X16 DAC that received high praise from measured performance and low noise floor ... and others in your price range!


https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/gustard-x16-balanced-mqa-dac-review.17419...

JJSS49  
"don’t forget to get a good streamer too, don’t just run the digital feed out of a computer"  
  JJSS49   thanks for everyones input cause there so many to choose from , Im was playing my music thru my Hifi Tidal app on my apple device over an apple pigtail to Dragonfly cobalt over audio quest Goldengate RCA to my CD input cause thats what audio quest suggested. My CD sound field mirrors my Heos sound field and I didn't feel like there was a real benefit so I demoted the dragonfly to the CPU where it does do some Justice for my PC system. Im still new to all this , I did try a Bluesound node 2 out but didn't like the interface so much so I returned it cause it was night and day accessing Tidal like from my tidal app. I would like to be able to use my Tidal app on my phone not some intermediate device like a blue sound that just complicates things ergonomicly  , my wife and daughter have to be able to use it to I'm a family man. why is going from 00001111's to analog so difficult ?