Who still listens to their First Generation Cd Players?

I must have owned 30-40 CD players, still own 10. The one I keep coming back to is a Philips CD960. I bought one new, sold it. Bought another mint one, sold it. And now I am on my 3rd. I am NOT selling it. I have never been able to find a CD player that sounds better.  I have owned Oppo 95, 105, Rega Apollo, top of the line Pioneer Elite universal DVD, top of the line Marantz SACD, Cambridge, Onkyo 7030, many Sonys etc. And the only other CD player I like out of those is my Tascam CD200. I just this week got a Nakamichi CDC-3A and quite like it. It turns out I am a fan of the Philips TDA1541A chip.

I'm still using my 20 year old Pioneer Elite 300 disc changers [I added a second one about 10 years ago], and love them.  I've tried some higher end single players, but they didn't sound any better to my ears.  Even if they did, the ability to store 600 CD's and access them all via one remote is worth any slight sound difference I might notice.  The discs are rarely touched, so they stay clean and mint.  They are remarkable machines, they never miss a beat and have never given me one bit of trouble.  Pretty amazing for a machine with the complex workings of a 300 disc changer.  The Sony ES line is very similar to the Elite players, and they can be had in 400 disc versions. I don't know if one is superior to the other, but I can't imagine switching from the Pioneer Elites.

I currently listen to most of my digital from a server which has my ~ CDs ripped in FLAC and easily accessible, although in my main system I do have an Emotiva ERC-3 in the main system for playing discs.

But I do have a unit that has been excellent over the years, an Arcam Delta 70 with a very rugged Phillips transport, built like a battleship and still fully functional after an almost 30 year span - not many early players have lasted like that.  Had a Black Box DA converter for awhile, then a Classe and currently a Hegel, and used the Arcam  with the first tow very successfully.

Sony CA9ES Carousel

Another vote for the early Phillips gear .... mine an 880 (just below the 960 but still about $1300 back in the day).  Heavy as a concrete block, absolutely three-dimensional sound (although premature fade-to-black,as the machine had rising non-linearity below -90db as the early chipsets all did).  Mine is not operating currently but I soon hope to have it repaired and then it will go into the system alongside my Oppo 105.  I A/B'd it back in 1989 vs Sony's top model, and it beat the pants off of it.