@schw06, if I’ve read through this thread correctly, did you say that you’re prepared to spend in the neighborhood of $15K to get what you’re looking for in a DAC? Now that’s a nice problem to have because IMO once you get into the world above $10k you’ve really got a lot of options and you can start considering Nagra, MSB, dCS, Chord DAVE, and the Mola Mola Tambaqui DACs, all of which are insanely good. If you start with a top shelf DAC and build your system around it, then you’ll have a stand-alone system that will last hopefully for years. The key is to be able to demo as many DACs as you possibly can without being in a hurry.
I built my system around a Chord Hugo TT2 DAC with a Chord M Scaler upsampler and WAVE High Fidelity Storm Reference BNC cables. The TT2 and the M Scaler both have Sbooster LPSU’s which are plugged into an AudioQuest Niagara power conditioner. Obviously this is far from a simple one-box plug and play solution. As if there is such a thing. But this is where my music journey took me and I’m pretty happy about how things came together.
Don’t be afraid to look at used equipment either. People who are obviously flush with way too much cash lying around sell super expensive high-end boutique audio gear at great prices just because they can.