Most of the first CD's in the 80's were made straight from the masters engineered for Vinyl and Casette media. They sounded awful with absurdly excessive EQ in the 3-6KHz range. Non-technical people commented that they preferred Vinyl because they could "hear the Aluminum" in CD's.
This was eventually fixed and proper CD masters started to become common in the early 90's.
Another thing to consider is the natural aging of our ears. Even without abuse high frequency sensitivity degrades as we get older. Those 80's CD's probably don't sound as harsh to someone 40+ today as they did back then.
I remember going to hear the first CD player imported to our city, it was a big event. I wondered why they had picked speakers to go with it that sounded so horrible. It wasn't until later that I found out it wasn't the speakers.
This was eventually fixed and proper CD masters started to become common in the early 90's.
Another thing to consider is the natural aging of our ears. Even without abuse high frequency sensitivity degrades as we get older. Those 80's CD's probably don't sound as harsh to someone 40+ today as they did back then.