Super Dac under $20K?

I would try to audition the new Theta Generation VIII Series 2 DAC.

Anyone else?

Weiss Minerva ($5k) is liked by Jeff Fritz at UltraAudio, better than Arc CD7 he says. Computeraudiohile prefers the Berkeley Alpha Dac($5k) to the Minerva and some guy here on Audiogon with MBL101s prefers the MSB Platinum($15k) to the Berkeley, if that helps?

Dodson Palladium is worth a listen. I have not compared it directly to other high end DAC's in my system but the level of resolution I am getting compares well with what I have heard from weiss, zanden etc. in showrooms.

Cheers,

Check out the "Chord QBD76". As stated in of the audio sites -

"Chord Electronics has once again produced the world's most technologically advanced DAC. Building on the success of the DAC64, the QBD76 now takes D/A conversion to a new level of performance not available in any other product. In addition a unique Bluetooth digital audio receiver allows users to stream high quality music wirelessly from a Bluetooth enabled phone, PDA or PC. Instead of simply using the best off the shelf DAC chip, Chord designed their own using the newest Xilinx field programmable gate arrays. This state-of-the-art development platform provides Chord engineers with a staggering 1,250,000 logic gates with which to design their DAC. The best DAC chips available today use only 30,000 logic gates. Thus, with over 40 times the development power, Chord engineers were able to control every aspect of their DAC's design and performance. As a result, the QBD76 is capable of resolving 40dB more data. With its new design and updated WTA algorithm, the QBD76 achieves a signal to noise ratio greater than 120dB, a dynamic range of 122dB, and, remarkably, less than 3pS clock jitter cycle to cycle. The QBD76 has astounding resolving power and is better able to reconstruct transient edges. This results in substantial improvements in: timing, imaging, soundstage depth, pitch reproduction and bass definition.

Theoretically it seems perfect, but I've not heard it ... so if you are willing of taking the plunge .... this DAC would make "bit perfect" sense.