I have a demo of CDSA for 4 days. The unit was new right out of the box and sounded terrible at the dealers showroom and in my house. This is the same experience that I saw in your reviews: Sounding flat and bloted and non-musical. I almost gave up but played occationally for the next few days. To my surprised, it was improving every moment i continued to play it.
So much that I found the comments by my friends to be true: Very analogue, involving and a wonderful mids.
Details of instruments/voices had much more details, emotion and life like. Bass lines were like vinyl. (I audition the SME 30 and Basis 2500 signature recently.)
FYI, I also had the latest Wadia 581 on demo as well.
Well, it would seem that it requires to warm up for very long hours and probably will require a super long break in time. U will be rewarded. This is a rather unusual CD player as the character is so different from other high end players I have tested.... so non digital in character. It really brings my system up by 2 levels. I m using the following equipment:
Goldmund Eidos 18 CD/SACD
FM Acoustics 245 pre
Goldmund Telos 400 Mono blocks
Kharma 1.2 Speakers
Cables: FM Acoustics, Acrolink, Purist Audio