Best sounding universal player (CD, DVD-A, 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.

What does it mean? The company will be closed?