Thank-you, I do feel very privileged to work in the field of my passion. However, all the DACs I've been evaluating have been bought personally, for my personal acoustic laboratory. Some might have a boat, or fix up vintage cars or some other money consuming hobby; acoustic research is both my profession and hobby. From my evaluations I make recommendations to my day job for my acoustic lab on the corporate campus. Over the years I've received some unexpected stock awards that have helped pay for it all. Corporate is smart in that respect, they know exactly what I will do and how they benefit.
I appreciate that there is no single perfect component or system that is "the holy grail" of sound reproduction, just as on the recording side, there is no single microphone that does it all, above all others. They each have their respective strengths and weaknesses. I am not a fan of the sports ranking of components, that one is a winner and one a loser. There are so many variables to the components, in feature set and sound qualities that I prefer to understand how a given component might fit into a particular system.
I am also somewhat infatuated with attempting to find the lowest cost system that delivers sound befitting of being considered a reference system. If such a reference system was created and available at the many meets around the globe, it could serve as a known sound. This could provide better comparison comments with other components / systems at the same meet. Two components already figure prominently in such a system, Bifrost MB and HD650. I still haven't settled on the amp. For a tube hybrid I am rather fond of the Project Sunrise III with a 12BH7 tube and Talema linear power supply. It has been suggested that I spend some time with an Asgard 2. Both are non-feedback class A designs with near DC to very high frequency responses. So an Asgard evaluation will be in my future. In any case, we are all indebted to Schiit for creating such an extraordinary line of multibit source components.