Best DAC under $2K

I vote for the ACK dAck 2.0. For me it just sounds right.
Chris is a great person to deal with.
http://www.ack-industries.com/

Go for the Benchmark DAC 1 , you won't be disappionted.

You may want to read my review of the TRL Audio Mirror D1 Signature DAC. For $1100 new (cost of DAC + mods) you will have to spend $5K or more to find anything that will compete with it. Just to show you I'm not that biased, Gmood1 suggested the Audio Sector DAC to me and after several converstaions with the designer, I'm going to get it. So there will be some comparisons made between the two once the Audio Sector arrives.

I look forward to your comparison. It will be fun that's for sure.Just make sure you give the DAC a couple of weeks to burn in. It will sound great after the first couple of hours but won't fully mature for several weeks because of the Black Gate caps. The Dac leaves no info unturned ,it will reveal the recording to the bare bone.

I also forgot to mention. Let him know before he completes it, if you want to un-invert polarity. As the unit inverts absolute polarity. This way you won't have to swap your speaker cables around.

Good listening!

I'm new to DAC's so I'm sure most of these suggestions are better than mine. For around $400 you can get an Aragon D2A2 that will handle several inputs and give you a good sound. It really helped my Sony ES CD players tremendously.