What solid state dac is similar to Ayre CX-5e?

I would actually keep away from USB as (1) it's inferior and (2) it limits the DACs you can choose from. If you must have USB, you can always get a USB to spdif converter - and still get any DAC you want (I strongly suggest going the firewire route as it is a most noticable improvement). If you can go $5k, see if you can bump it up a bit and give the Esoteric D-05 a listen (+ a few hundred bucks for a usb/spdif converter).

Thanks for the input.

Could you please enlighten me on the firewire route option? I am not aware of any dac with firewire input. Or are you talking about firewire to spdif convertor?

The esoteric gears look impressive, but I have not heard it before. How would you discrbe the sound? Similar to Ayre's school of sound?

Thanks

How is the Bel Canto compare to the Havana?

There are a few firewire interfaces available. I went with the M Audio Firewire Solo - $200 and awesome for me. It takes a firewire cable from my PC and has an spdif output (into a monarchy upsampler into MF X DAC). Firewire much better for passing audio as it does so in a stream, as oposed to USB which uses packets. USB was never intended to stream audio. It was intended to connect peripherials.

I had extensively auditioned the Ayre with the Esoteric X-03 SE and I felt the Esoteric has better retrieval of low level detail, more air around the instruments and a wider-deeper soundstage. The did both do a great job and didn't sound very different at first, but after about 5 hours of listening, the Esoteric became my preference. I felt the Esoteric brought me into the music as opposed to the Ayer, which brought the presnetation of the music to me. The D-05 had a tad wider and deeper soundstage than the X-03 SE (the dac was hooked up to an X03 SE as a transport). On the Stereophile recording, The Mooch, the Esoteric reproduced the music and the venue itself. I had never experienced this before on a CD. With Chesky's Rebecca Pidgeon, Spanish Harlem, the D 05 was slightly more holographic than the X-03 SE -

I would settle for an X-03 only Dac if there was one (I don't believe there is) which is why I am considering the D05 for my squeezebox (replacing the Benchmark).

there are 2 dacs you should definitely check out that are in your price range. Both the Berkeley Audio Alpha Dac and the Weiss Engineering Minerva are getting rave reviews and are approx 5 grand each. the guys who designed the Berkeley were responsible for the Pacific Microsonics Model 2 - one of the greatest dacs ever. Robert Harley has stated on the Forum of avguide.com that the Berkeley is the best front-end he's ever heard in his system.
the minerva just got a great review in soundstage.com. also, it does fire-wire which supposedly takes it's performance to another level.
Good luck.