I have never liked the sound of the Benchmark DAC1 and yet Ric is right that I was also impressed the DAC2 HGC. Very good sound and handles a lot of formats and inputs. No SD or USB stick input directly, but maybe some external device can allow such connections to the USB input?
The seriously impressive sounding device was the Playback Designs MPD-5. The MPS-5 version also has a CD/SACD player that would be super sweet, but not smaller or lighter than your Sony monster.
What is Dinny's DAC?