I owned a Pontus a while back very nice dac, I never updated mine, not sure if you can delete updates and go back to square one and see if presentation is more natural.The Aurender is very natural and easy to listen to, I enjoyed the Auralic, you may be able to find a g2 close to your budget. Someone mentioned the Cambridge I have a cxn v2 and very surprised how good it sounds being so inexpensive very analog, I did have to use a nice balanced cable and added a Synergistic purple fuse to get where I needed. I know people don’t like talking about it but those damn fuses can do wonders, you can buy purple used for $80 bucks just to test the water, Masters is awsome. One of the best things I did with the Pontus was ad a ddc Hemes maybe you can try that down the road,
Looking for a more up-to-date streamer
This is turning into a bit of a saga. I'm now on my third streamer, having started with a Sonnet Hermes to pair with my (former) Sonnet Morpheus DAC. I wasn't particularly enamored of the sound of this combination, so from there moved to an Innuos PulseMini with an upgraded power supply. Again, the combination was not to my liking--it sounded kind of shrill and didn't seem to control the music as well as it might. In the meantime, I changed to a Denafrips Pontus 15th DAC, which solved at least some of these issues, but still unsatisfied, I currently have a (used) Lumin T1. This streamer is a major improvement over my previous ones, but since it's a much older model, there are some things it can't do which would be awfully nice to have available.
Specifically, it can't output via USB, only optical and coax, and it's too old to be able to incorporate Qobuz Connect, which I think would be a better interface than Lumin's own app.
New or used, is there a streamer out there in the $1500 price range that would incorporate these features and sound as good (or even better) than the Lumin? I know my price-range is not as high as I wish it were. If I could afford to spend multi-thousands on this, there'd be many worthy choices, obviously.
One thing I really don't need is a streamer with a sophisticated DAC, as I'm perfectly happy with the DAC I have. I've noticed that most streamers available today have built-in DACs (for better or worse) and a lot of them also act as pre-amps. These are features I don't really need.
Advice and opinions gratefully received. Thanks!
(System: Modwright KWI 200 integrated, Ryan R610 speakers, Elac Varro RS500 sub, Denafrips Pontus 15th DAC)