DAC - DCS Bartok or the new Berkeley Alpha DAC 3

I have a Node2i, Pi2AES (roon endpoint), NUC (Roon rock), and Innuos Zen Mkiii. No contest, there are definitely improvements as you go up the chain. Look into a Innuos Zen MKIII as I think for the money, it's hard to beat. 

Thanks for all the great thoughts,  I am certainly willing to spend more on the streamer side but I need multi-room capability but I do not want to use roon.

I think simaudio/moon, naim and auralic all have multiroom.

Are there any other brands I should consider?

Just to be clear the Berkeley I am looking at is the new Alpha 3 (11K) not the reference (25k).

OP @efoo 

Both of your choices are great. 

IMHO, I think you should check out the Holo May Dac. It isn't a chip DAC. It is a NOS R2R DAC. I'm leaning towards one myself. 

Either Level 2 or penultimate KTE. 
http://https//www.kitsunehifi.com/product/holo-audio-may-dac/

Best of luck. 

I’m sorry if this offends anyone, but I will never understand how some of you spend tens of thousands of dollars on glorified networking equipment (e.g. a streamer)

Good discussion. I use network equipment to stream, and the dedicated audio streamers sound better in my limited experience. 

I use an Esoteric K-01XD with a FPGA-based sigma alpha DAC ("master discrete") like the N-01XD because I like to spin disks. I have owned a DCS Vivaldi One and a DCS Bartok. In this comparison, most folks prefer the DCS systems because they are capable of filtering the sound to produce something "warmer", but I prefer more analytical sources that are modulated downstream (Luxman->ARC->Wilson). 

I know this may drive the OP nuts, but I have to recommend that you need to listen to the DACs and streamers for yourself to make these judgements. There is no such thing as the best sounding product components in this domain - listeners differ in what they enjoy most in terms of reproduced music and which audio characteristics they enjoy best.