A warm DAC?

Border Patrol or a used Aqua la Voce. Both sound organic and natural. Add a Cardas Cross or Golden Cross interconnect, and it will be organic and warm in a way that you will never get tired of it. I ended up with Aqua and found its combination with Cardas Cross quite addictive.

Another vote for R2R--even more so for NOS.

Another vote for MHDT Labs Orchid w/tube buffer. Very nice sound.

Another suggestion: ditch the USB input of whatever DAC you have & use coax cable coming from a SPDIF converter (there are a number of very good ones). So the USB cable goes into the converter, and coax cable comes out, going to DAC. I use a Musical Fidelity 24/192 converter w/a silver coax cable from Oyaide--and I'll never go back to USB straight into the DAC.  

@alexbpm, what mods of Grannyring's do you refer to? I bought cables from him once, but didn't know he modded DACs.

vinylvalet,

Just curious.
Was the Gungnir Multibit included in the shootout?

I've been happy with my exaSound e32 Mk II DAC, which does DSD and MQA, the latter format being the reason I upgraded from the e12 DAC I'd had before. MQA via Tidal has been a great pleasure.

The e32 Mk II is $2,500, and is returnable I believe; I don't think it's sold through dealers. It won't win any beauty contests but makes nice music.

Chord qutest 

Amazing SoundStage and best of all 4 filter settings some warm and when you change system (or indeed some recordings) with a click of button you can select more precise filter.... 
(Qutest offers Hugo 2’s proprietary user-selectable frequency-shaping filters and input selection controls, available via two fascia-mounted spheres, introducing useful flexibility.) 

It has 4 different modes starting with the Incisive mode which has an ultra linear frequency response and as you cycle through the other 3 modes using the colour changing Filter button it gradually rolls off the top end and essentially makes the sound presentation warmer and warmer still, you get the picture. This should be considered a nice feature as it removes the situation or worry of potentially a too hard, harsh or clinical sound.