Tubes or not

Audio Mirror Tubadour, Border Patrol Dac SEI, MHDT Orchid. These three dacs seem to be the go to tubed dacs in your price range. The Border Patrol only uses the tube in the power supply, the others in the out put stage. Preowned Lampizator Amber would also check a few boxes for you. Solid state, the field opens up but it would be hard for you to go wrong with one of the Schiit multibit dacs. Depending on the model, the Schiit could leave you with some extra cash to apply toward other parts of your system. Best wishes.

I have owned a number of DACs and the MHDT Orchid is my favorite.  I think it sounds as good or better than my Auralic Vega, which was $3500 when new.  I haven't A/B compared them both in the same system, but they are the two least "digital" sounding DACs I have owned and I think the Orchid would definitely hold its own against the Vega.

Elizabeth, the OP listed that he/she already had tubes upstream. I always enjoy your posts but usually you don’t make blanket statements like “all mid priced dacs” and then opining that they are “all flavor of the month”. In retrospect, you probably didn’t intend it to come off that you had heard these and other dacs in your system and summarily dismissed them. There is so much great equipment being built today and the advances in the digital arena requires open minds and actual listening.

I'm not interested in a lateral move. I have multiple Richard Gray power conditioners in my system. I live in New Orleans we have multiple issues with clean power and water in the city. I'm not looking to spend $3k+ for a new or used DAC. I'm going to look into the ones that have been mentioned. Many I'm not familiar with which is why I asked the question. I'm not trying to correct anything or fix the treble. I just want to be able to hear an audible improvement if i go with a new dac that doesn't cost a few thousand.  I like tubes. I like the sound of tubes and I like rolling tubes but maybe at my price point that's not the way to go. That's why I asked. Red herrings like PC, cables and other hardware just opens a bottomless pit. What file formats I listen to and what inputs I need are more legitimate questions. I need the standard inputs. 2 coax and 2 toslink along with a USB would be ideal. I have most HD file formats including DSD. So it has to handle DSD also.