@georgehifi just curious have YOU actually heard each of these dacs or are YOU basing your views on build and chip sets?
Got a feeling your not going to like what I’m about to say.
Heard the Soekris 1541, Denafrips Termi, Holo Spring L2, and Audio Note, based my list on what I heard and some of what’s used and implement in the circuit.
I’m not a believer in tubes in dacs, to me it’s a way of "sweetening" a dac that’s got problems being hard or harsh, at the expense of "lowering" other wanted parameters also, silicon does a far better "truer" "direct coupled" job if the base dac is good one. If not it will be much more revealing of it’s faults, and therefore could be sweetened some by the use of a tube used in either the I/V stage or output buffer stage after the dac chip.
Cheers George