Chord DAVE alternatives?

Hello fellow 'goners.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of listening to the Raidho C1.1 and D1 paired with bryston 28 (the latest ones) mono blocks, a zanden pre, and chord dave. While the synergy was amazing I was mostly there to listen for a possible speaker upgrade, however (as these things usually go) the chord dave caught my eye. Right now, most of my music is digital and I am using a fostex hpa8 as a dac. I usually do toslink out from my Astell player or macbook pro as I found it to be less finicky than usb (different laptops were sounding different).

1. the chord dave is very far outside my budget. if i were to "upgrade" dacs are there more reasonably priced alternatives? i want to capture that tone and timber and spacing but understand that i can't have all that the dave offers. will the qute/qute ex/qute hd be a nice step up from my current dac?

2. the dealer said toslink was no good - any suggestions on what i should use instead?