Which DAC?

Save yourself a ton of money and buy a used Theta Gen.Va.
Still as good as any other DAC mentioned in this thread.

The MSB Link 24/96 'too bright and mechanical'? The one I owned for a while was the Gold Link version, with upgraded parts and dual-differential DAC's, but still, my objection to this converter had a lot to do with its rolled-off, euphonized sound, especially in upsampling mode, and its pursuit of 'liquidity' that sacrificed full dynamic expresssion and midrange neutrality. It didn't sound accurate, but it certainly didn't sound bright or mechanical (its tonal deviations could be quite attractive with the right disks, although it shrank the soundstage), my reference Theta DSPro Basic IIIa in comparision passing much more detail and frequency extension as well as dynamic life. Unless the non-Gold version sounds very different, I wonder whether your results indicate a high-jitter transport or simply poorly-mastered disks.

Benchmark Dac 1 $850.00 will put to shame DACs costing 4x as much.

I just recieved the AVA Omegastar dac. Its connected to a Rotel 955ax...for the moment. Just breaking it in but, right out of the box its resolving everything, back wall reflections in the studio, etc.! Pretty crazy. I think after its run in I'll just float away. So far I'm floored. What a far cry from the econo-dacs a few years back. My first was a dac-in-the-box (slow, veiled, dynamically challenged) follow by the venerable Audio Alchemy DDE 3.0 w/DTI Pro-32 fully modded by Dusty vawter. So far there is no comparison between the AA power duo and the Omegastar DAC. I'll just say so far it has the most natural, grainless presentation I've heard in my system. That incl. the most expensive Camelot dac, at 3 or 4 grand. This is insanely close to top vinyl.

The other high-value DAC I was looking at is the Bel Canto DAC2. but Have not heard one...yet.