I totally agree with Mr. Porter, many different technologies can offer reference level performance along with different "flavors" based on personnal taste and system synergy to provide great sonic pleasure. I audtioned many DACS, DCS,ML,Audio note and finally selected the new Ensemble DAC because it sounded the best to me in my system. There is no one "BEST" but many reference level DACS/TRANSPORTS that offer great sonics depending on what you like and how it matchs up with the rest of your gear.
Wadia 861se vs All others.
I know someome who has just purchased a stock unit. He said it was better than his DCS stack(Verona included). He also raved about the build quality, upsampling and the technology. When I informed him that my dac was an 8 yyear old Altis Ref, he basically said it was garbage because it didn't have a high sample rate. I told him that Zanden use dac chips from 20 twenty years ago and don't upsample or over-sample. He wasn't impressed. His position is based on the fact that the DCS components bested his EAD 9000 because it upsampled at a high bit-rate.