I have the DirectSteam, am very happy with (the sound of, and build quality of) it. (I'm not particularly crazy about it's looks). It's different from my previous Audio Note, but I'm not ready to say "better or worse"; right now it just has it's own strengths vs the strengths I lived with for a few years with the AN. And that's saying quite a lot imo since the AN was a spectacular DAC compared to every other one I'd heard.
In general I like the concept of FPGA based, being programmable it can always be improved on sonically and feature-wise - it's not locked into a certain "sound" or limitations of a specific DAC chip.