A new dac?

Carpathian, have you auditioned the Holo Cyan2? It's an R2R DAC, and it has got a lot going on for the price (which is a bit above your budget). 

@thecarpathian R2R is supposed to be smoother. Never tried a ladder DAC. 
If you can find one used at a good price and nit risk losing money if you flip it, go for it. 
Reason I didn’t like Mytek and Benchmark (which was slightly warmer than Mytek) is that studio monitor quality/feel to its presentation. Too direct. Too matter of fact. 

@lanx0003 yes you remember correctly about the Aurender N200. Owned it. Loved it. I ran it with Bricasti M3 via Audience Studio One USB. Until I decided to upgrade the DAC. I went for the latest Meitner MA3i. Liked it more than the Bricasti M3. The Meitner also features a high quality streaming card. I ran an extensive comparison between the N200 feeding Meitner DAC via USB vs. running the built in streamer. The sound quality was more different than better with one unit over the other. I even preferred a slightly more lively and faster presentation with the Meitner over the N200/Meitner combo that was rounder and slower. So I sold the N200. Bought myself a proper Roon core, a Room Nucleus One, couple of nice reasonably priced Ethernet cables. I’m really digging this simple digital front end. 
 

But before arriving here with Meitner, I had a Bel Canto DAC 2.5, Chord Qutest, Bryston BDA-3, Benchmark DAC 3 HGC, Bricasti M3, Marantz SA-10 (used as player and DAC), PS Audio DSD MkI, Chord Hugo TT2, another Bricasti M3, Meitner MA3, then Meitner MA3i. 
 

I would try the Pontus 15th. It's around $2K. Has gotten amazing reviews. There is also a new dac from a division of Denafrips-- the Garlubidor Divinity, which is a little less than 2K. Unlike the Pontus, it has a display screen and 2 IIS inputs, if that is what you are looking for. Also got a great review by Steve Huff. Good luck. I'm buying one of the two in the next couple of months. Haven't decided which one yet.

The LAiV Harmony and the LAiV micro DAC have all been reviewed very positively.

Garlubidor Divinity

One hopes their engineers are more talented than their brand name consultants.