Marantz CD-84
(summer 1984 - 1986+)

Not 1st gen' but still close enough... Launched along the CD-54, the CD-84 was available later on with black looks, a "II" suffix and dual DACs.

The mechansim on both is the monster Philips CDM-1 (the made in Marantz Japan version).
DACs were the fully 16-bit TDA-1541 with 4x oversampling, following the 14-bit TDA-1540 of the original CD-63, CD-73 and the 84's 1st version (14-bit "extented" to 16-bit resolution with a combi of df and 3rd order Bessel filtering.

This "II" version seems very rare and the "II" isn't even written on the frontplate... but it seems, however, that it had an S/P-DIF output, unlike the original version. I believe the original CD-84 to not have been available in Japan - only the black one can be seen, with an S/P-DIF plug, so...

Although the 84/84II didn't sport the full zinc die-cast frame of the CD-34 and CD-54 but "only" a diecast aluminium sub-chassis, Marantz claimed a 10Hz chassis resonance and, according to some, the sound still compares favourably to more recent offerings...
But as a drive-only, the CDM-1 stands TALL among recent offerings - in fact, it'll be the only CD drive still standing in five, ten or twenty years.
A very interesting design anyway, with the "square black box" syndrom somehow only lurking around.

What is lovely, in retrospective, is reading Marantz insisting on the fact that only the P and Q sub-code tags were used so far - the remaining R, S, T, U, V and W would soon serve to display graphics on a TV or text on a display !

These would be output using the "digital output for CD-Graphics or any other future system".
That would be CD-G indeed. And if CD-G didn't make it, LD-G did make it - normal result since CD only was the side result of the research made on... LaserDisc :)