Be VERY careful all you other oldies like me, when lookjing back to the mid 80's. The sound systems and speakers especially that we used back then were almost certainly optimised for a warm, soft toned and in the case of UK peeps with Linn LP12's of the era, a rather 'fruity' sounding vinyl player. These systems could just about take a period FM radio transmission, itself slightly warmer and softer than the studio output, but give them a CD and the results could be terrible as said systems just weren't neutral enough!
I remember spending some time with the earliest Philips, Marantz and Meridian (M-CD) players and getting a headache after an hour or so. recoding to a Nakamichi (682ZX from memory) cassette deck using metal tape made the sound more tolerable to me (was it the added noise or just extra band limiting with level, I've no idea). Time moved quickly back then and I was able to borrow different machines to try. The Sony 101 did have a 'ballsy' kind of sound (I grew to love it later on but many suffered laser failure), A top loading Micromega (with heavy brass disc weight and thick perspex cover) sounded terribly contrived and coloured to me, but audiophiles of the time revered it. many far eastern machines could sound acidic but looking back I honestly wonder if it was the domesticated PA systems we were using at home (UK peeps from the time will understand)...
For me, it was the B&O CDX (lovely thing to use and watch), the Mission DAD7000 (Philips 104 sibling) and my first player, a Meridian MCD-Pro which got me started (and in credit card debt as I bought many discs to play on it). Interesting my comments on the 14 bit Philips chipset giving me headaches, ad the MCD-Pro also used this chipset, albeit with fancy clock and supplies I recall. The flashing lights showing basic inaudible error correction and possibly audible digital interpolations could be an anal issue though and subsequent machines ditched these.
I also remember some machines up to the early 90's seemed more sensitive to 'muck' coming in on the mains and i also still feel they weren't so good at not putting muck back down the line (signal screens for example). Ultrasonic spikes around 70khz were measured by Paul Miller back then as well, but maybe it was the band limiting filters in popular UK amps which were affected here?
Aren't we lucky today? Modern dacs are largely totally immune to the mains and supply powering them and specs are better than ever. I'm fast getting over the vintage kick now as I slide ungraciously into retirement from this industry and am happy to leave these digital relics be (old shit turntables are a different story still, but maybe not for much longer).
Good that the old 1541 chipset can perform sensibly, but so much total ignorance in audiophool land and trouble is, many don't want to learn or know other than what their senses working together tell them