1985 Meridian MCD player--anyone got one?

I've had this model since 1985, hardly ever use it, but when I do, the beauty still works. Makes a keening noise when it starts to play but otherwise the phonics are decent--maybe not at audiophile 2015 standards, but enjoyable enough.

Wondering if anyone else has got one--your thoughts, experiences with it--how it compares with your other CD players.

 

Looks cool. Does it have a digital out?

 

Did S/PDIF exist in 1985?

 

I'm glad you're amused.

 

I didn't know either.

 

Isn't the Meridian a clone of the first Phillips/Magnavox CD player?

I wish I could find a cheap one in good working order.

 

Reprinted interview from around 1986 with Bob Stuart from Meridian about this player (I think). Lots of interesting design details: http://www.stereophile.com/content/meridians-bob-stuart

 

I call bull$hit. Based on my experience with the likes of Theta, the American is probably the best first generation CD player ever made by Phillips.

 

No digital outs til maybe 1990 or 1991.

 

This was my first CD player - I remember it fondly.

I was one of the only people in my college dorm at the time with a CD player...much less a stack of CD's to play on it.

Worked fairly well for getting girls back to my dorm room...come to think of it, that's how I met my wife.

 

Very nice.

 

The first one I ever saw was at a Magnavox clone. It was at the John Wanamaker's department store in King Of Prussia, Pennsylvania. I'm not sure what year it was.

 

You're absolutely right about lack of available CDs at the time. I lived near Tower on Sunset Blvd in LA then, and the store had only one rack of CDs along with their huge stack of LPs. I dimly recall they had some early Motown twofers, some Japanese Prestige jazz CDs and some French Vogue collections of Chess blues artists, maybe some early Springsteen. But no Dylan, Beatles, Stones or anything approaching the canon of popular music.

 

I still have a Philips CD100, which Meridian used as a basis for their player.

No S/PDIF, but that's not the the biggest difference with later players. It also has no time display and no remote. The only comfort feature was a repeat and a track program function.