I have had a veritable parade of CD players through my system in the past several years including modest Music Halls, Shandlings, and Rotels and more expensive units from Lector, Musical Fidelity, Audio Aero and DACS from Benchmark, Cal Alpha and a Sony NES 999ES Platinum Modwright. I recently happened upon my old (1986) Magnavox CD 560 with the Philips TDA 1541 chip D/A converter and Philips CDM-2 CD mechanism (no mods whatsoever)when I was cleaning the basement and put it in my main system just for old times sake. WOW, what a musical sound. Shames all of the new stuff. It is still in my main system as we speak with no plans to remove it. I also put my old circa 1986 MG IIIa magnepans (factory rebuilt by Magnepan a few years back) to replace my MG 20.1Rs which are now in my vacation house and got another shock as to how amazing they sound. Maybe the sound we keep searching for we already once had. So Pdscpecl and Elizabeth I too discovered that some old stuff really was and still is amazing. Roscoeiii, I do agree with your points also but from personal experience was shocked to hear the old Magnavox in comparison to the new generation units.
Older is better - D/A chip?
I had three audio nuts over my house yesterday for a component shoot out. I have a highly modded Jolida JD100 tube cd player with Mullard tubes. We then swapped in an old Magnavox player running a TDA1540 chip. This player has been recapped, extensively modded, and the oversampling processor removed. Well, we were all blown away. It was clearly more open, detailed......had more decay versus my Jolida or a Sony 5400. I just assumed the more current chip sets would sound better. What an eye opener.