Sounds like a lot of people just want a shrunk down DAC-19. I used to own a DAC-19 and I loved it. One of the memorable parts of my audio journey.
However, personally I think balanced is a must especially since the LC is balanced as well. It would be crazy not to leverage this.
Maybe it's just me. Every time I experience a SE vs balanced on the same dac or amp the balanced mode kills the SE one. While I also own some nice SE amps and stuff like the Bakoon amps are awesome single ended, I'd prefer a balanced one if possible.
R2R (DAC-19 does this quite well for SE but it's a fair bit bigger than LC), Dual Mono D-S (Pulse XFi already does this quite well but it's only sub $1000 if you find it second hand) or multi-bit; I don't really mind as long as it sounds very good.
I'm pretty happy with my Pulse Infinity but if Cavalli comes up with something interesting, I'd definitely consider it.
Price definitely needs to be sub 1k and if possible close to LC price. However, if the DAC is out of this world good then maybe something up to 1.2k is worth considering. There's no real point doing what others have already done unless it is significantly superior or cheaper.