Dianne, you've got quite a background in the Managerial and Engineering side of our hobby. Great to see - we need more female audiophiles. If you need to keep budget down & are happy to consider Dealer 2nd hand, I'd check out this Wyred 4 Sound Dac-2 DSD SE dac. It has good dac chips, some nice premium parts, does DSD (obviously) & is well made. This example has a slightly dim display & is well priced @$1.2k - https://www.usaudiomart.com/details/649471100-wyred-4-sound-dac2-dsd-se-da-converter-black/ Otherwise I found another example on USA Audiomart in good shape asking a bit more (presumably without the minor diplay issue).

Check out the Bluesound Node2. Decent DAC and an awesome feature set including being able to decode lates formats like MQA. For $499, it isn’t outrageous. Fewer feature but the Mytek liberty would be the next most interesting unit. It lacks the streaming support you get with the Node2 but is a better DAC for $999.