Help me pick a Dac

Your Node stands out at the inexpensive - entry level consumer component.  

So maybe the streamer first? Any good streamer dacs combos around my budget worth A look?The stellar gain is also a analouge pre amp so I thought its dac might easily be beat by a dedicated unit.  Thanks for the input.  
 

You have a nice system worth a good digital stack, sell the Node and Gaincell and either go for a streamer/DAC

Budget - Lumin D3

or

Expensive - Aurender A200

I have carefully listened to 6 DACs in the last 6 weeks in a system set up to do level matched A/B or in one case A/B/C comparisons.  The differences in DACs are generally small so any "upgrade" you make may not provide you with the improvement you are looking for.  Having said that, the Eversolo A8 was equal to or better than some DACs costing 4x as much.  The software is a bit funky but it should meet your streaming needs and if you have a lot of stored music then adding a SSD internal drive is going to provide you with the best quality it is capable of.  I would buy it used for about $1500-1600.  If you buy it new just know that it will need several hundred hours before it achieves its best audio quality.

I can highly recommend Audio Research DAC2 for you. Currently there two units available, one here in Audiogon and the other other at High Performance stereo. I believe unit from High Performance Stereo has new caps installed. 

AR DAC2 is a solid state DAC built around Ultra Analog D20400A DAC chip, one of the best that has come to the market. If you are wondering, some of the top of the line DACs from  Stax , VTL, Manley, Mark Levinson, Sonic Frontier, etc., were designed and built around this particular chip. It is one of the best DACs in addition to Burr Brown PCM63 another best performing DAC chip. Both are 20 bit implementation and multibit DAC chips.

You can get AR DAC2 for $1,300, well under your allocated budget. Keep the rest for software.