To the OP - it's not difficult to home demo these (somewhat harder for the Playback)...why not do that? In typical Audiogon fashion, it seems that half these responses are from folks that don't have direct experience, and the other half is from folks who only have experience with one, in a system v diff from yours.
If you're already inclined towards the Bricasti amps, I'd be inclined towards the Bricasti dac as well.
I can tell you, from direct experience, that there is no contest between the stand-alone Bricasti streamer and the current Playback Designs MPS-X (a D to D converter and streamer). The MPS-X is significantly more expensive...and significantly better.
Someone tried to extrapolate what the Playback dac sounds like based on a old-generation Playback digital streamer. That's a weird way to think about things. It's not hard to find good digital design. Digital has been very good for a while. What's hard is to find excellent analog output stages. We're talking about digital...to analog...converters.
When dcs came out with the "Apex" upgrades, the digital didn't change much. It was really about upgrading their previously lackluster analog output stages.
I'm getting distracted from the point...which is just listen for yourself.