I need to get my Octave before I go buy the M51. By then the prices will have gone up huh. 

NO!  How about the Audio-gd Reference 7.1 that's been raved about on the stereo.net.au forums?

I'll be upgrading my Onkyo DAC-1000 soon-ish.

Trying to decide whether to go for something like the NAD M51, or fork over double for something like the Antelope Zodiac Gold.

Basically for dynamic amp I'll be getting the Manley 300B or the Liquid Glass. Probably upgrade my 'stat rig to an Electra eventually as well.

I'll be upgrading my Onkyo DAC-1000 soon-ish.

Trying to decide whether to go for something like the NAD M51, or fork over double for something like the Antelope Zodiac Gold.

Basically for dynamic amp I'll be getting the Manley 300B or the Liquid Glass. Probably upgrade my 'stat rig to an Electra eventually as well.

The Zodiac Gold is definitely not worth two NAD's.  If you must buy one, wait until Black Friday when Neil from Sound Science Cat puts it on special.  The thing about the Antelope DACs is if you're not using 24/384, don't use it extensively to attenuate volume as a preamp, and don't care about the fancy remote, the lower models + voltikus are indistinguishable from the Gold (give or take some inputs.)

Also Antelope one of the shadiest companies out there.  Aardvark itself was shady enough.  Still, I have been contacted by an engineer from Antelope who said he and two other engineers are trying to put a lawsuit together as Igor took their original work at Antelope, patented it himself, threw them out of the company to avoid paying them, and then profited off their ingenuity.

I figured they were pretty sleazy with all that fancy market-speak, but I was rather impressed by the way the Gold sounded. I didn't hear any of the lower models however.

The NAD M51, like the DAC-1000, is appealing to me because it seems simple, manageable, and effective. By comparison the PWD seems a bit overwrought.

I feel like the Zodiac is only in the same league with DACs like the Anedio and the Auralic. I'm not sure where that money is going. For what it's worth, I've been hearing a lot of QC complaints about the M51, and about NAD M products in general.

Do you need 24/192 MF? If not, a Levinson 360S is now around $2600, which is a pretty damn good deal on a $7500 quad PCM1704UK DAC. The 360S has long been one of my favs, and you can of course add asynch USB for a few hundred bucks. Series 1 Berkeley Alphas are also now in that $2600 range, and the middling hardware is a little more excusable at that price.

The Burl DAC is $2500. The reason I'm so interested is that it's supposed to be a very warm and very analog sounding DAC, like an Audio Note minus the tubes. The opposite of the Benchmark type sound which I can't stand.

Well done John Kenny. I'm not surprised people have said the JKDAC32 is way better than the M2Tech Young.