I own a Meridian 808.2. I bought it a couple of months ago. While I listened to, and compared it to, a few other players, I did not attempt to listen to a wide variety of other CD players. A home audition of the Meridian (and two other players) sold me on the 808.2. In addition to the apodising filter (which really does make poorly recorded CDs sound better), I was (and continue to be) favorably impressed by the soundstage it throws. I have a very difficult room (there is no side wall for the left speaker; there is instead a large opening into another room). I had bought a preamp with balance controls because of that problem. But on many of my CDs the Meridian's soundstage is good enough to render a balance control unnecessary. After getting the Meridian, I sold my preamp and bought a better one without a balance control.
My major complaint regarding the Meridian is that its fixed output is set at a high level. I suppose that that was done in order to achievce an optimal signal to noise ratio for the Meridian. But it does mean that in fixed output mode you will get a very high volume level if you crank up your preamp. The Meridian, however, does have a variable output mode, with volume controlled by the remote. That is primarily intended to allow the Meridian to be connected directly to an amp, with volume controlled by the CD player. I didn't experiment to see how well that may work on a preamp, since my new preamp has remarkable signal to noise ratios at virtually all volume settings.
