I would echo Fisherking's thoughts. I love it's detailed, neutral sound - I had a Rega Jupiter before, which sounded beautiful itself and I intended originally to buy an M-Dac for my Sonos ZP90, but there were none in stock....so I home-demo'ed a CDQ and after a week, it was all-change.
It wasn't just the CD sound, which wasn't really all that far ahead of the Jupiter, but the general flexibility and all-round brilliance, i.e. it's a CD player, pre-amp, DAC and don't forget the headphone amp, which, to my ears, was a revelation (on plugging in both my SR325i's and UE Triple-Fi 10s, I was genuinely shocked at how good things sounded, having only really used the headphone socket on my 8000S amp/iPod before)
Anyway, I flogged my whole system bar the speakers and my old Audiolab 8000P, but still felt the 8000P was holding things back a bit, but as luck would have it (!) one of the guys at SSAV happened to be selling his Tact SDA2175 power amp and said I was welcome to try it....I was a bit wary as I'd never heard of Tact, but I kept it for a couple of weeks and was totally seduced - lower, more detailed bass (without being too prominent), smoother and more transparent, and generally loads of control etc - quite gob-smacking really when compared to my 8000P, which I wasn't really expecting.
So, I couldn't comment on the Quad player (which sounds great from what I've read), but in my experience the 8200CDQ is a great piece of kit, especially given it's versatility - I now have my Sonos ZP90 and Sky HD plugged in, plus DVD player. Also, I managed to get mine (brand new OLED version) for £830 - I was about to start haggling but the manager had already got his calculator out and said "well, it's still pretty close to Christmas, so...) and the Tact cost me £500.
I've also read a fair bit about people pairing it with Bryston 4Bs, Bel Canto Evo etc with fantastic results, but then you're looking at a good couple of grand in the case of the Bryston (drool drool)