You could build a bottlehead foreplay preamp for $150 and get a sony sacd 333es or 555es player for under a grand from some of the dealers on the net or good guys in california. I think they are selling the 333es for $400. With the money you save, you could get yourself alot of sacd's and regular cd's and I bet it will sound as good or better than any 2k dacs out there except maybe for the EVS dac.
DACs with volume controls
Okay, I love all this audiophile stuff, but I'm a private school teacher (little money). So are there any decent used or new DACs that I can purchase with a volume control and hence skip the need for the preamp? I'm thinking I can go 1.5 grand, maybe 2 if I wait till summer. Anyone out there use this stuff or heard it? I'm new to this sonic world and have only read about the Wavelength DAC, don't know any others.