The Taiwanese-built Valab DAC is pretty remarkable for its $200 price. It's very small and gives you the options of coax, toslink and USB input. I use one in my office driven via USB from a MacBook Pro but it sounds amazingly good in my main system, as well, even using an inexpensive DVD player as a transport.
budget DACs
I am going to add a wadia itrans and need a good budget dac for it since my digital player does not have a digi in. Ideally it would be small and run cool since I don’t have any space on the rack for it and it is going to sit on the floor next to my rack. I am thinking about the mf v-dac ($300 new) or the bel canto dac2 (~$500+ used). Anybody listen to both and have any thoughts to share? Are there other dacs in the <$500 category used I should be looking at MDHT, etc? Thanks for your input.