How much should I spend on a new DAC

@yyzsantabarbara Thanks for the information, very helpful. I just put in an order for a Wireworld acrylic toslink cable to see for myself and assuming I like it will move up to the Wireworld glass toslink.

Hi jetter, We literally have buildings miles apart with fiber between them. Fiber is great when working well, but it's a pain when it's not. I don't know if they sell tools to clean Toslink connections, but we use tools that look like they have dental floss in them to clean fiber. The quality of the glass, the method used to polish the ends, all come into play. I use coax at home, I don't need to send 100 gigabytes a second, or to deal with the issues that accompany fiber, I get enough of that at work. I am not a fiber expert, we use specific cables based upon the amount of data we expect it to handle and the associated switches and associated equipment. We don't use Toslink, I don't know if it was ever used in networking, I haven't been working with networks for that long. This opinion is worth everything you paid for it.

Lou

Wow… advice all over the place from folks. 
most of it garbage. 
 

lucky for you I also own a project dac box s2+ and a pass amp (not their integrated amp). 
 

first, I got the ifi elite power supply for the project dac. 
 

this made a huge difference. 
 

you have a good dac that with the ifi power supply will compete with dacs in the <$2000 range. I have done this with compare with the qutest and the Pontus and the dac box with the ifi elite power supply and the dac box s2+ is still in my system. 
 

the other area is your speaker cables and other cables. Your cables are well below the capability of your system. 
 

do not replace your integrated amp as someone suggested, you have a very nice integrated amp. 
 

so better cables and and the ifi elite power supply for is what I recommend to take your sound reproduction to the next level. 

Before spending money to relpace your dac, try replacing the coax and power cord with Odin 2 Silver and Gold from Ali-Express. First I replaced a Pangea coax ($169) with an Odin 2 Silver Coax, and was amazed, I then completely replaced all my hi-end cables ($$$$) with Nordost Odin 2 (not Nordost, but incredible value). The gold for component power cords and speaker cables. Power amps need to swing more current. See Amazon for fabulous PCs under $50.00. I bought 2 of these

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Please realize that any high-end brand name cable from Ali express (any cables out of china) is likely fake. 
 

wont comment on their no name cables but I would doubt they are any good for the caliber of audio system you have.