SMSL seems to have some QA issues, will skip that.
Those ASR reviews dont tell me anything 
I dont likegraphs and folks who get boners while looking at them 
Also people there seems quite snobby.
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I love my ifi Zen dac. It has a nice tuning for me. It is also balanced. It really is impressive for the price. It has a 4.4mm balanced pre-out on the back, so you can use it for balanced amplifiers as well.
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Buy it from crutchfield or similar place with good return policy and try it. Or as someone mentioned, for a few bucks more you can get the portable version. Though I do not know if it is balanced.
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Good luck finding that kinda cable 
Here it also states :
There’s upgrade potential too, with iFi making an outboard mains power supply called the iPower X (£99/$99), which definitely improves the sound in all areas, but also moves the DAC into desktop-only scenario and a higher price segment.
Would probably go for that too. 
Under 500 desktop options I believe are limited to two being the zen and the m500… I’ll echo that the zen is really nice… you could also buy an audio quest dragonfly to give things a try
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I have that dac,and for its size and performance its like a thx level device…you just need a better amp i you wanna drive something then hd 600s…but you can buy a project headbox s2,for like 120.ish dollars,and drive almost everything,and you have a small 500 dollars combo that is briliant and has everything possible…or just buy the thx monoprice dac amp for 500.
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I ordered a custom cable from Hart Audio so I could run balanced line out from my Hiby R5. Same would work for the Zen.
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Honestly i wouldnt pay $500 to see what the fuss is all about with MQA. In my experience mqa is only beneficial to hip hop/rap/pop and maybe vocals on other genre. You should go with a zen dac or the portable ifi hip dac. And not pay more than $150. those dac amps are very good for the price. You seem to already have decent dacs. What headphones do you use? Having used tidals mqa I didnt think it was really worth it. Just made vocals stand out a tiny bit more but made everything else more airy. Maybe helped the bass a little too.
I mostly use Hifiman Ananda, HE400i. But also use the DAC output for speakers and KOSS x Massdrop electrostats
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Nice, would you ever look into a dynamic headphones? Could be nice to get a balaced dynamic with an ifi dac amp for $500 or iem
Z linked to one in his review
^^^ X2 don’t believe the hype…had it with Tidal haven’t missed it with Amazon Prime one bit.
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thats a 4.4mm to dual xlr for 34$ on ebay, buy today
i run my monoprice retros, meze noirs, CAL’s, and my 1 pair of iem off of the internal amp on the zen, they all sound great and it has plenty of juice for all of those.
Personally i’ve been looking at getting the donald dac it has MQA for 99$
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It’s pretty sweet imo, I like mine. I haven’t tried the mqa on it but it does sound pretty sweet for the price
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30$ shipping on it. puts it same price as zen dac. i have been looking at it as well. for a different sound sig in the same price. Plus its a cute little guy.
edit: just checked, shipping went up to 39$ for me. 
edit2: not sure where auris is located, but looks like there are a few venders in the US at least with them in stock for cheaper shipping then through earmen direct.
i personally think amazon streaming services are sub par. tidal sounds better, mqa or otherwise, to me than amazon. and i have amazon music unlimited. different strokes for different folks. now mqa itself does not seem to make much of a difference in a lot of music. you can “clean” it up and slap an mqa tag on it, but if it isnt actually recorded well, its not going to make much of a difference. and i find it makes the most difference with classical.
edit: also don’t buy into all the hip hop mqa…thats only because jay z owns tidal. boosting bass on synthesized music does not make it master quality 
The Audioquest Dragonfly Cobalt sounds good when playing MQA, but PCM is only so-so.