I didn't listen to the pearl mostly because I didn't want a black box. I auditioned the SA-15S2 from which the Pearl is an improved variant (in KI sig style as Marantz has always done) and found it to be a very good player, easy beating the top Arcam and Rotel models I also tried. It won because it sounded more musical, offered more detail and got instrumental tonality more realistically than the Arcam CD37.
So I bought the SA-15S2 in silver
I also compared the SA-15S2 to the SA8003, which is still two rungs up from the CD7001. The difference was vast. The SA8003 sounded muddy, greatly lacking detail but also musicality in comparison. I assume the KI Pearl is a further step up, but having not heard it I can't tell you how much it differs.