Wadia 861, Levinson 390S, or EMC1MKII

To my ears, I preferred the sonics of the Wadia 861 to the Electrocompaniet DAC. The DAC throws a huge sounstage and has great bass but did not sound as real in the vocals as the Wadia. It was close and I could live with either one. For transports, I used a Sony SCD-777ES, Audiomeca Mephisto II.X and a modified Shanling. The Wadia was warm, refined, had black background, good soundstage and details. The Wadia was very easy to listen to also and you can run it direct without a preamp.

Hope this was helpful.

For me the Wadia has preference over the ML! Much more musical. ML is as sharp as a knife which might be good for special listening situations but I found it fatigueing. With the Wadia you just hear MUSIC.
Good luck!

There is no need to even compare the EMC1Mk.II to the Wadia
and Levinson players. It is clearly not in the same league.
I would prefer the Wadia, but you will need to test both
in your system to find the absolute match.

The 861 must be very different from the 860. Cause the 860 sounded like anything but music in my room. Bleached midrange and extremely poor PRAT.

I would not consider any of them. If they do not have high rez capability they are a dinosaur. Read past threads concerning Wadia's customer service.

Chuck