Next best exponential DAC quality level?

Being pragmatic, the image should be confined between the speakers. That is all that is possible on the recording. What the Audionote creates is artificial. Again, I do not mean that disrespectfully, the goals are just different.

Agreed. My tube amps do the same thing and I love them for it. Deeper and wider feels more real...the art creates the magic.

It's hard to get the magic with IC chips and switcher power supplies. Linear power supplies, ladder DACs with discreet parts...that I believe gives us the harmonic distortion that makes everything sound better....unless you like clinical and exacting sound. 

This site is dedicated to hifi measurement. Saying that it appears odd that many responders claim there is no difference between say a $5 dac and a $5000 dac. Clearly in these tests your average cheap dac measures differently to an expensive dac, however they still appear to sound the same.  If this is so, what are we measuring and why? This remains a serious question not a mere slight on individuals.

Because DACs measurements are different doesn't mean you can hear differences or pick which is which in blind testing. Being more realistic I would say some $200 DACs would be hard if not impossible to guess better than chance from some $5000 ones. 

I would not in any way call the Audio Note sound euphoric, syrupy or harmonically distorted. It on the contrary is very fast, open, clean and ever so slightly lean. There is a separation of instrumental textures and dynamic contrasts that make the Dac's I mention seem very sedate or compressed. There is much better HF extension with the AN even with the vivid setting on the Gustard. The Gustard bass is simply not as defined or could be considered woolly. Most people do not have single speakers that do true deep bass with the quality of my CS5i's or Divas and I would guess that the Gustard was voiced for bass shy smaller speakers. I have had many uber components in my systems over the years mainly from working in high end audio shops in NYC in the heyday of high end there and experienced what separates mid fi from high end in spades. The you are there sound is still a very expensive proposition in digital regardless of new tech. What is amazing is there is absolutely nothing record breaking about the AD1865 chip at 18bit and a 768k sample limit but the implementation makes all the difference.

The bottom line in my posting was to elucidate that there is a huge economic chasm to get the "quantum leap" that the OP was referencing and in my experience it comes down to costly implementations.