$1300-1500 DAC

Another vote for the Benchmark Dac3. I might even know of one going up for sale soon.

I have the NAD M51 in my system and it sounds beautiful, very smooth.  I would say the only thing I can fault with it is that is does not do MQA.  It's not that it matters much but I feel NAD should be able to add the feature via firmware update since all of the newer dacs from the seem to support MQA.  Tidal Masters streams do however sound terrific anyway.  I also use mine as a preamp connected directly to a NAD C272 power amp.  Works great.  The volume control is done via 35 bit DSP in a way that you can lower the volume to -66db (almost inaudiable) before truncating the signal.  Not selling mine anytime soon.

You could save yourself $1100 and try the Pro-Ject Pre Box S2 Digital. It is indeed competitive with many of the others mentioned. Pro-Ject knows what they're doing when it comes to digital, more so than their analog ventures. Many online dealers (including Amazon) offer this unit with a satisfaction guarantee and it'd be very inexpensive to ship, thus nothing to lose in trying one.

Hello if you can save for  $2750 this Great new Lampizator dac 
is insanely good just read the review.for me to sell my very good $6k pc audio dac  for Amber-3 is saying a lot.with a Money back audition ,after 24 hr warm up ,not going back ,and if you wanted to upgrade to upper a Lampi dac ,you can sell it with a 5 yr transferrable warranty ,great resale value ,check out 
the review. Very true to form .
http://www.enjoythemusic.com/magazine/equipment/1019/LampizatOr_Amber_III_DAC_Review.htm

Another vote for the RME ADI-2 DAC. It even spend some time as my stand alone dac for my 2 channel setup and now sits on desk as part of that near field/headphone listening station.