Lumin X1 or dCS Bartok

Dznutz, your argument can go both ways.  Sure if you have the top of the line you know you are getting the company’s best.  But if you get a lower model of a much higher line you will most likely be getting trickle down technology from 2-4x price gear but just be missing that extra 5-10%.

I can definitely say Lumin makes some fantastic streamers.  I have the T2 and it holds it’s own against much higher priced DACs.  I imagine the X1 would take this to another level.

Lumin focuses mainly on streaming - they make steamers with DACs, not DACs with streaming capability like others.  The streaming side is rock solid, rarely has issues.  Nice part is not only are their DACs fantastic, you can use the digital out capabilities later if you want to upgrade the DAC side.

A few that come to mind are Auralic Vega G2 (cheaper), MSB Discrete with network renderer or a tad higher priced would be Bricasti M12 (M3 is cheaper), Brinkmann Nyquist MKII, Bel Canto Black EX DAC, Vitus RD-101, amongst many other.

There are a bunch of higher end DAC/Streamers in the $10K+ category, the harder category is less than $10K.