You guys have such incredible rose tinted specs it amazes me

Those early Philips/Marantz machines gave me a headache and a Nakamichi cassette recording of discs played on these always sounded better I recall. The better ones (I liked the Mission DAD7000, B&O CDX and Meridian MCD Pro, which I owned) have balls, but no subtlety at all, no "space" and little "air" I found.

The nicest of the earliest players was actually the Sony CDP-101 for me. This player of all of them seems to have stood the tests of time sonically, although it's still rather flat in perspectives. The CDP-502 and 505 which followed very soon after were rather superior I remember.

So there!