[John Atkinson]

Arny Krueger wrote:
I know that the CDP 101 was about one step past being a lab prototype...

Not really. I remember 2 previous generations of Sony players that were
used as technology demonstrators prior to the Japanese launch of CD in
the fall of 1982. The most recent mounted the disc vertically on the
front
panel and was being shown at the 1982 Summer CES in Chicago.

The CDP-101 was very much a production machine, but suffered from
operating at 1xFs and using analog reconstruction filters and a
time-shared singe-channel DAC. Those were the features that were
replaced in subsequent Sony designs.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile