DAC 3-4k range

It would be a mistake to leave Lampizator out of your considerations. I'm listening to a level 3 with lampizator transport now and it is very good digital.

My eedac was actually a bolder cable company modified unit and was quite good for the coin. The dac was extremely resolved with it's sabre32 chip but the resolution was balanced well with tone and dynamics from the tube output stage and power supply augmentation.

It was a hard player to fault, and was among the best digital I ever heard, but it was clearly digital in it's presentation.

The lampizator level 3 I picked up to replace it is more analog in it's signature. I generally hate that as a descriptor, but what I mean by that is that it has a real flow to it, relaxed yet effortless. It's pretty resolved, but it never strikes you as detailed. It just has a weird intangible rightness to it. It stages wide and deep being really holographic and just breaths naturally.

It doesn't make my Kuzma turntable obsolete but it is what I do 90% of my listening on. It will sound good on a short audition, but it's over time it really proves it's worth.

I was listening to a lampizator 3 tonight with the volume control option driving an Alchemist Forsetti Signature on a pair of Daedalus Ulysses speakers and it was very competent in the volume control position. The system wasn't lacking in the ways I feel a system usually does in the absence of an active preamplifier.

That said the system was employing a lampizator transport which was not cheap.