Thinking of changing things up. Need advice on DAC/Streamers

Not  the best idea for best resolution a high quality preamplifier is better in dynamics as well as resolution  The Meitner 3 is pretty good but put against my 

LTA  Micro Z- OTL preamp. It came up  short on several levels  ,buy a much better dac that would be the first thing  . You never mentioned your Amplifier ,

a New hot Dac you can get for around $5500 is the New Merason R dac, Terminator-15, or Holosprings May ,  , all dacs require good digital cables and power cord. , to get the most out of them .

@verdantaudio thanks for the great info! I may PM for some things

@tump350 excellent. it may be worth grabbing a used MA3 and upgrading it to MA3i down the road... 

@curiousjim Aurender I've not looked much into them as I was never interested, but could be worth a look

@carlsbad2 @pbecker128 @fastfreight  MU2 is out of budget right now. 

@baylinor definitely could be my next step to try with a DDC. the new Harmony looks pretty good. 

@brbrock I've never heard the V, but the IV is definitely good. Vlad also will upgrade previous versions, so that's an option too

For all others, and @audioman58 - I totally get that ideally you want separate and better preamp, etc. why does any vendor sell devices that include more than one piece in the chain if they are inferior? because it's a choice and option. there's plenty of reasons why people choose products like this and always something/someway better to do it. 

​​​​​​​I understand the negatives to doing something like this. I'm not asking to be talked out of it, but for opinions on what I asked for. *all said in the nicest way*

The Meitner  Ma 3  is a nice  it’s just better with good separates that was my point.

The biggest bang for the buck is the Mola Mola Tambaqui DAC with an Auralic Aries (1.1, S1, or 2.2) streamer.  Sonically there's nothing anywhere near the price that can beat this combo.

thanks @audioman58 appreciate it. I can have the luxury of trying it as just a DAC / pre with my Zenith, then put a tube preamp in the chain and use it just as DAC. lots of options. building out 2 separate systems so can swap a lot of stuff around to to try. 

@ddgtt interesting, thanks for this... as Verdant mentioned above, my eye on a Linn Selekt with Katalyst DAC is similar in sound to Mola... could use my Zenith as streamer