Cd Player shootout ; which is the best of the best


Want to have some fun and at the same time benefit from some savy advice, here is the deal.
My front end is a Wadia 861 (actually an 860x recently upgraded). The unit's presentation is exquisite, in fact it bettered or equaled in various areas a 270/27ix Wadia combo I was babysiting for a friend while waiting for mine. However I've been serously considering going one step further and send it to Steve Huntley of Great Northern Sound(GNS) for his further upgrade which it's know to yield a significant improvement in the performance of this unit.
While doing some research in this topic a couple of units have cough my eye as serious contenders to the title of "best of the best cd player" Now I am wondering if I would do better upgrading my 861 or switching to one of these, the contenders are:
* Wadia 861 (with the GNS modificaton)
* Audiomeca Mephisto 24/192
* Audio Aereo Capitole 24/192
* Electrocompaniet EMC-1 MK II 24/192
There maybe some other worthy contenders but for sanity purpouses I've limited the scope to these ones.
For matching purpouses the rest of my set-up includes Lamm M1.1 monoblocks driving Verity's Parsifals via XLO Limited speaker cables, balanced interconnects are XLO Limited.
The 861 goes directly into the amps. in my current set-up but with 2 of this units I would need some volume control and am thinking a Placette pasive unit since ther is no analog in my inmediate future. No offense to vinyl lovers, I recognize it's many strenghs but at this point in my life am not willing to deal with it's complications.
Have you had the chance to compare some of these units among themselves? Your experiences will be greatly welcome and appreciated. Thanks.
jmr
The Audio Aero is the Best CD player I have heard.The Cary is not in the same League.Also a friend whose audio opinon I value chose the EMC-1 over the Cary.It was not even close.
Different strokes for different folks I guess.
JMR please give me a call this is Jaime Candelario in Puerto Rico. Send me an email if you do not have my phone number. I have the 27ix,( without the latest software upgrade) modified by Great Northern Sound. This would make for an interesting experiment.

Good Luck
Lordgorian, the Levinson also has a digital input, but it will not accept its own digital out signal, even if modified by the TacT. Not sure why this is so or if it is necessarily true with all CDPs--that's my question.
Lordgorian, the Levinson also has a digital input, but it will not accept its own digital out signal, even if modified by the TacT. Not sure why this is so or if it is necessarily true with all CDPs--that's my question.