High resolution digital is dead. The best DAC's killed it.

I don't know if there is an affordable 24bit R2R DAC yet.

Affordable is of course different for everyone but my MHDT Lab Pagoda (PCM1704) sells for about $1300 and does 24/192 natively. Sounds wonderful.

The vast majority of my music is 16/44.1 and my focus has always been to get the most out of the format. The first DAC which proved to me 16/44.1 was "good enough" was the dB Audio Labs Tranquility. According to many the DAC, with it's cheap TDA1543 chip and lousy measurements, couldn't possibly sound good. Apparently dB Audio Labs subscribes to the "everything matters" philosophy of DAC design and proved the naysayers wrong. I still own and use the Tranquility. 

A few years ago I decided to explore the high-res world for myself and purchased enough good sounding music to care about hearing it at the native rate. A couple of DACs later and I finally settled on the MHDT Lab Pagoda. This DAC sounds fabulous not only with 16/44.1 but higher rates also. Funny though, I have little interest in high-res at this point. Good old Redbook is all I require.

Now, you may not like hearing what your music sounds like, you may want distortion or coloration, in that case I would look at tube DACs or some poor measuring DACs from Audio-GD or similar.  But if you want to hear the music as recorded, the DAC3 L and Qutest are the best for the ~$2000 price range.

Not the first time I've read similar from you. Have you actually heard some of these DACs you so easily disparage? In fact, you seem to have opinions on many, many components (not just DACs) and I'm genuinely curious if you've heard them all. Are you in the industry?

BTW, I'm also curious to know which components comprise your audio system. Care to share?