Best sounding universal player (CD, DVD-A, SACD)

Redbook only with the 808, didn't know they no longer supported DVD-A.  I don't think they ever did SACD.  

A fine list indeed....there is another version of the Esoteric UX-1, the 'Limited' upgrade version (I had the UX-1 then paid Eso for this upgrade) that sounded even better than the stock UX-1.  If you only needed CD and SACD, I would suggest the X-01/Limited as it had 2x the number of DACs per channel (4 versus 2) over the UX-1 and sounded even better....the UX-1 Limited excelled at SACD and DVD-V and DVD-A though its RBCD/XRCD playback were excellent.

It's hard to pick the "best" universal player. You don't specify your price range so I guess that the sky's the limit. Dollar for dollar, you would be hard pressed to beat the Oppo 105D (it plays everything). If that's too mundane for you, then I guess that dcs stack will look pretty attractive to you. It does to me, too. Your list isn't bad either!

The Ayre is going to be discontinued in 2017.