DAC’s

Get the best Lumin DAC / Streamer that you can.  i had the D-2, U1 mini, A1 and X1.  You kill two birds with one stone nd great sound and ease of Ap use.  you can find them used.  You might be able to find an X-1 on the used market for $7800 to $8400 and that is the flagship.  

T+A DAC 200 for less money ?

I like the Wyred4sound 10th anniversary DAC very analog sounding and three dimensional wide sound stage, not cheap 4500 US.

I detect a sense of exhaustion from the OP.  This is supposed to be fun.

My 2 cents is keep the DAC and streamer separate.  The DAC is the larger determinant of the sound, but the streamer can make or break the experience.

A great sounding streamer that has a poor software controlling package, or that doesn’t connect well, can make you frustrated and miserable.  Keeping DAC and streamer separate allows you to change one or the other independently.  There are already a couple of comments in this thread that the streamer end of the Meitner may be subpar.  That would scare me off.

  I think that in general DACs get better as you go up the financial ladder but the rest of the system matters as well.  Have you been able to demo anything in your own system

There are big differences Between DACs, I used to use a dac hooked up to my iPhone to listen when on a plane for work.

‘For me, the dac has to be FPGA based, network and i2s capable, mqa and dsd capable or I won’t even look at it. These are more expensive but worth the expense.