is a SACD+CD player better than a universal player

I am not qualified or experienced enough to add anything more, maybe another thread would get more takers.

My only input is this: yes, the Ayre is two-channel only, and for that it misses my mark (I have hundreds of mch hirez discs). My Modwright 3910, like most universals, has a video and digital out defeat mechanism called "all off" that likely gives you some large percentage of isolation that a gutted audio-only player would give. It is very difficult on 10% of my DVD-A's to live without ANY video, however, as they are authored so poorly (not sonically, just navigation) that finding the right layer or group is nearly impossible without a video feed.

The Esoteric line is a bit confusing but the SA-60 and DV-60 offer the mch universal player as audio-only or with video, and I haven't heard anyone say the SA-60 blows the DV version away or anything. My $.02 is that the video circuitry is easy to bypass, and that the differences in DACs and analog sections is a lot more evident sonically and a lot more worthy of evaluation than audio-only vs video-included (i realize you first asked about SACD/CD vs universal but assume you are mainly asking to discern whther onboard video is a large gremlin or not).

Yeah Ted, you pretty much nailed it, and your answer is very helpful to me. That has been my thinking as well. I was wondering if anyone had a good case to be made for the alternative.

If they only have to concentrate on SACD/CD those resources can be used to make Sacd/cd better than if the unit plays everything. That is the Concept with Marantz Sa11, it designed only for SACD /CD so it can be a great player for those 2 modes of playback only.