DAC recommendation for DSD input

Thanks to all so far for the responses, much appreciated.

milpai-- yes, the burning in issue is PIA if they send you a brand new unit which you only have for a week!

cdennison53-- I live in Boulder and PS Audio is a short car ride away, they have a good return policy, and I may try one. I think they have a refurbished MK2 available.

whart-- I dont believe the T+A supports i2s, no mention of it in manual. For me, the jury is still out on i2s as being an improvement over usb. I've not had a chance to use it myself. 

pwoodard922 -- I've been listening to DSD since I owned an MSB Discrete DAC several years ago. I have quite a collection from ripped SACDs (DSD64) and purchases form nativedsd.com and Bluecoast music. 

Thanks aberyclark, I'm definitely going to audition a T+A. Hopefully next week or so.

My digital front end is a SGC i9 based optical server to an Optical Rendu to a Holo May KTE.

The May is extraordinary. I have tried using both I2s and USB, the USB was better to my ears.

My digital front end has undergone many changes over the last 7 years, one thing I can say for sure, is that up-sampling or DSD conversion is done much better on a server that is designed for it rather than the DAC.

In your case, the iMac Pro has the same issue the Mac laptops have, which is interference from the display (the laptops are even worse). If you really must use a Mac, you will be better served getting yourself a Mac Mini. Better yet is something running a Linux distro (no, I am not a Linux fanboy) meant for audio. One of my iterations before my current set up was using Daphile, and it was very good. I suggest rolling up a Daphile server on an old PC and test driving it before you change your DAC. You can still use Roon with it.

Roon is a pretty decent music player, but Daphile is far and away better. Better yet is to use HQPlayer Embedded (which is what I use now). Daphile is painless to set up, combined with Roon, you get a very good music player that will compete with anything. Setting up a Linux server with HQPlayer Embedded is no simple task, and only a few commercial servers are sold with full support for it. The learning curve with HQPlayer is not very steep, the issue is the plethora of options means you will spend months switching between things until you figure out the best combo - not much different than tweaking speaker positions.

Small Green Computer sells a number of servers, all of which can run HQPlayer. I went with the i9 server so I could do big DSD conversion.
If I had to do it again, I would not bother, I have found I prefer a mild up-sampling of 4x with a 20bit depth as the sweet spot in my system which can be easily done with an i3 processor. Sometimes I switch to DSD 512, and I am awed for a couple hours at the "clarity and airyness,’ but then I start to find it fatiguing. I can listen to 192/20 all day.

One last comment about DACs that people do not consider enough.

Pay attention to the output voltage, it can limit you on what preamp you want to use. The May (and many other expensive modern DACs) output about 5v instead of the traditional 2.4v. This will cause major crosstalk issues with gear with poorly designed and outdated circuit boards (the Carey preamps are a fine example of poor design and worse customer support). Many tube amps will not be able to behave well with a 5v input. Most SS preamps will be OK with it.
A higher output voltage on the DAC greatly reduces the noise floor, so it is good from that end, but it means that you need to either use a low gain preamp, or reduce the output at the server side which has a direct impact on bit depth vs noise floor.
After several years of trial and error, I wound up using a Levinson 523 preamp. The output level on the May was a real issue for me, I wanted a tube preamp and had trouble finding one that fit my system and could handle the voltage.

I have Hegel 590, Magico A3 and the T+A DAC 200. The T+A is definitely better than the Hegel built-in DAC. However I only use it for PCM because it’s too much hassle to play DSD. I’m using Innuos for streaming Qobuz and I’d need to buy a powerful computer to utilize the DSD feature. I did download 1 DSD album (from a high rez site) onto a thumb drive and downloaded it into the Innuos and determined, to my ear, the difference is not worth the extra effort and expense.

@mintakax 

By the way, I did end up saving $$$ buy purchasing a pre-owned unit from a reliable, certified dealer.  Happy listening