Recommendation for DAC needed.

Go for the Yggdrasil. You won't find much better no matter what you spend. The best thing is that you get a 15-day trial period... plug it in, wait two days to burn it and try it out.

Do you have the multibit upgrade, or is it the standard Gungnir?  If the latter, the upgrade might be the way to go.

The only thing that I found significantly better than my Gumby is very pricey Aqua Formula. 
Improving what feeds it is often neglected and can make a bigger difference than what you might expect. 
Cheers, 
Spencer 

There’s also the question, will any of the above be significantly better than my Gumby, aside from the fact that they will decode hi res files?

Reading the above, I’m now considering an  Auralic demo, the Benchmark or the Chord Qutest.
Anybody have any thoughts on these?

The benchmark DAC 3 B is on my short list but I could use some strictly neutral so it's good to know that about it. 

@rvpiano  I recommend you read around a bit more.  There are a LOT of DACs out there in your price range.  My conclusion is that there are at least three categories of sonic presentation: strictly neutral, slightly warm and forgiving, and warmer still.  Benchmark definitely falls in #1, though the '3 model is less ruthless than the '1 and '2.  If it were me, I'd be inclined to find a PS Audio DirectStream Jr (category #2) discounted by 1K.  The Snowmass downloadable upgrade is supposed to be very good indeed.

PS Audio DirectStream and Chord Hugo 2 TT are in that price range and have very good reviews as well.

mzkmxcv,

Thank you much for your recommendation. 
The DAC3 sounds exactly like what I need.

Benchmark DAC3 beats pretty much everything at its price and most all above, but it’s already practically totally transparent. An SMSL SU-8 is very close to performance (backed by measurements) and costs a lot less.

The Bryston doesn’t offer anything over the Benchmark. Similar/worse performance for more money; it’s excellent, just overpriced. I do dislike the asthetics of Benchmark though.

I have a Bryston DAC3 which thanks to Trump’s trade war with Canada is now slightly over your budget, but you still might be able to pick up a demo for 3K.  I love it but I haven’t heard the BDA 2; but I’ve read the main difference between the two models are the HDMI inputs on the BDA 3.  If you don’t need the HDMI feature then the DAC 2 might do the the trick.  Otherwise the usual suspects—Mytek Brooklyn, Benchmark, the various Chord products, Border Patrol is rose colored distortion is your thing...

just got a lks dac, this thing sounds wonderful.

That should be capacity not compacity!

The Ayre would be a good choice as would a Bryston BDA-2.