Best used or new DAC under $3500

I was like you and sick of Sabre DACs. Give the Metrum DACs a shot. I've owned probably 20 DACs in the last 3 years and the Metrum Pavane and Metrum Onyx (what I have now) are by far my favorite. Musical and resolving with loads of tonal textures. They're NOS R2R DACs done right.

Anyone heard the Soekris?

Some dude is selling a brand new Hegel HD30 for $3.6k. I would buy it myself if not for the fact that I may buy some speakers this month. I am also considering the PS Audio DS but the Hegel would win out at the price difference.

Guys,

Thank you all for your recommendations! I wanted something with tube(s) that was natural sounding, musical, transparent with no oversampling, filtering or buffering and now have this Dac in my system; Border Patrol SE with SPDIF.

I have had this Dac for 5 days now and I am really loving it! It has the ability to draw you in to the music with natural overtones and vibrant but realistic imaging and it still has more to go in terms of burn-in but bass is so impressive; nice clarity but not state of the art but very good indeed.

I normally listen to specific tracks and now find myself playing the whole disc, the music has a wholeness to it that’s hard to explain but the room is alive with life-like musicians/instruments. Will see if an Audiophile fuse will elevates its performance even further... Truly a bargain in the Dac arena with technology changing at break-neck speed.

Wig

... I wanted something with tube(s) that was natural sounding, musical, transparent with no oversampling, filtering or buffering and now have this Dac in my system...  the music has a wholeness to it that’s hard to explain but the room is alive with life-like musicians/instruments.....

I can relate to your quote. As BorderPatrol states "the most natural sounding DAC’s are usually NOS (no over-sampling) designs based around the R-2R resistor ladder chips with no digital filtering". 

Best of luck with it.