SW1X dacs

The US importer is Joe Cohen of the Lotus Group in Navato CA and he is great to work with. I am not in the biz and have only talked to Joe on the phone. 

I ordered a DAC II Special and put up a post on another Board as to my listening impressions. The one with "best" in the name. It elevated my digital playback to the most pleasing sound I had heard from my Aurender N100H and replaced an AMR DP777. 
I then ordered a DAC III Balanced-and upgraded my music server to a W20- and it arrived this Tuesday and is still burning it in 24/7. Look for a post with my listening impressions here and there about a week from now. 
I can say this much now. These are built to order by one man and two off and on assistants and the wait time can be three months. Covid has slowed down parts acquisition. Slawa Roshkow is a stickler for the very best parts-trannies, resistors, caps, and tubes. And-the designs are constantly being tinkered with primarily as parts availability changes. For example, my DAC III Balanced has slightly different transformers than past models and it turned out that the transformers needed to be configured slightly differently than in the past to eliminate any trace of hum. 
If you have ever heard a top of the line AN, you have an idea as to the SW1X sound but I have heard AN's and I think the SW1X's are a bit punchier. 

The DAC III Balanced is in house and playing. I can not imagine any DAC on the planet, in my system, producing more etherial sound. After another two weeks of careful assessment I will update this post with a more meaningful review. 

Hi granada1;
It is an excellent DAC.
The issue is "is it worth 13K" considering that the DAC II Special is half the price?
The presentation is a bit better. I will even venture to say it is significantly better. But is it worth the price differential? I am still struggling with that. It might be a matter of system synergy. I am still letting it all sink in.
I will report back but I am not ready yet.
I recently spent a fortune for a Lyra Etna Lamda. I am all smiles. It is worth every penny on my Reed 3P and hot-rodded Garrard 301. I am in nirvana.  It took me no time at all to reach that conclusion. 
I hope you can read in between the lines. 

What’s the verdict then? Is this Sw1x DAC 3 balanced worth the money?

also what’s your experience with Audio Note DAC 5?

There is no answer to such a question. I can only speak for myself. It is an excellent DAC. My take on it seems to change day to day. Some days I am absolutely convinced there is no better digital to be had at any price. Other days it sounds just very good. I am now of the opinion that one "problem" with the DAC III B is that it accentuates the difference between good digital recordings and mediocre ones. I have been listeing to a fair amount of digital streamed with Qobuz lately and the variation in recording quality or perhaps the stream is again very high. The DAC II Special I owned before trading up struck me as being 95% as good and it too seemed to strike me differently on different days. This does not happen with my vinyl rigs. Sure, some days my hearing just sounds off. And crappy pressings do sound crappy. But for the most part my vinyl rigs never fail to please immensely. 
I listened to an Audio Note system at Axpona '19. I came back to that room over and over. I don't recall which DAC they had in the room but whichever model it was sounded amazing as did the entire system.