A moderate priced dac

I bought a fairly expensive Dac $3k and then I bought a Dac for a couple hundred dollars and compared the two. I sold the higher dollar Dac and kept the other as the difference was minimal at best.
On some songs, I couldn’t even tell the difference. Other songs I could hear a very slight difference or I convinced myself I could. At any rate, you may want to try doing that. Buy yourself an expensive one and a lower dollar one and you may be surprised at how little the difference.

MHDT Lab-Orchid. $1,100 and you can tube roll the output tube. One can also change out the stock TDA 1541-A stock chip for a Philips TDA1541-S single crown (which i did). The damn double crown went up in price before i decided i wanted to upgrade that far. This DAC sounds surprisingly good.   

I love the Orchid. Best value in audio today when it comes to dacs. Wonderful sounding dac.

Look at SMSL and Topping. Save yourself a bunch of money. Seriously.

The Chord Qutest DAC is a little out of your price range ($1800), but it has received high praise in every review I’ve seen and is considered an outstanding value. There’s a used one for sale on Audiogon right now for $1400. I own one and am very happy with it. I recommend checking the following review out and then looking for a used one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlfCWUbmyGE&t=4s