After days of warm-up and listening, the new version of the AKM AK4499 is my new favorite DAC. My other reference is the Wolfson Micro WM8741 that the earlier AKM DAC's approached but did not equal. The AK4499 surpasses it. The other AKM DAC's I tried were the AK4490, AK4495 and AK4493 in comparison. I could never get the AK4497 DAC board I did buy to work.
Classical orchestral music recordings done with simple mic techniques, sounds like a mic feed. I have been lucky enough to record a Steinway D for a piano recital and a lot of that quality comes through this system.
Waiting on a few parts to get the Borbely HPA running, but the iFi iCan did well. I could not resist a Topping E90 Discrete HPA that was a refurb, so added that to the setup with even better results.
Back to more listening.