"Best" DAC for a grand or less

Chicagojtw, you may be confusing thin, bright sound with accuracy, unless you're listening to Britny Spears all the time.

Thanks for all the suggestions everyone . I was wondering though about the Havana , I read it does not convert HDCD . So ,... stupid question , but does that mean no sound from them ,or those cd's will not benefit from that DAC?

I can only tell you that it reads and plays HDCD maybe some of the information is missing but if that is the case I certainly can't hear it. Sounds great! bty about the bass, this unit is still breaking in and I must say that the bass is improving dramatically but not in an exaggerated way as stated above. I am very sensitive to overcooked bass, don't want it don't like it but some to, YMMV

It appears to be silly to waste more energy on the "accuracy from specifications" nonsense.

You are definitely correct from your perspective that "accuracy from specifications" is nonsense - it is also silly for any of us to "fight" about this.

However, to be fair, some few people do value accuracy enough to give it a high weighting in their equipment selection criteria and do not regard specifications and measured performance as nonsense.

Specifications and measured performance are rather important in our modern world. Without it we would not even be here on this forum chatting via the internet.

To give an example, I wish the Mark Levinson system in my car was designed with more attention to accuracy - because quite frankly the darn thing is just an incredibly expensive "19 speaker" boom box. However to most people's tastes it sounds awesome.

Certainly the Benchmark is not the only DAC that measures flat or that has super-low distortion. I'm sure that most of the DACs already mentioned measure well.