Is Levinson 31.5 still the best transport for $$

Things may come and go, but the Lev 31.5 and 30.6 can still stand toe to toe with anything out there.
As an alternate, I'd suggest the Wadia 270SE and 27ix DAC combo.. either of these combo's are pretty much at the top of the heap when it comes to red book CD playback.
Both have solid bass performance, no featherweights here.

The current state of the art is the EMM Labs equipment. My customers have gotten rid of the following in favor of the EMM Labs:

Accuphase DP75v
Accuphase 100 / 101
Audio Note DAC 3.1x Balanced / Spectral SDR3000SL
dcs Elgar/Verdi/Purcell
Levinson 31.5 / 30.6
Wadia 27ix / 270
Zanden Model 5000 MK II

There are so many more that I have not listed.

The ML combo was state of the art for quite a while, but the technology is quite behind a number of current products.