CD sound quality

Sure can. Do a search on "best CD players" or "budget CD players".

Most Philips products have a rolled off top end. Combining this with lower grade cabling AND "softer" sounding electronics ( like most NAD stuff ) could definitely tilt the scales towards TOO soft and round sounding. You could try to band-aid the situation by switching to some overly bright cabling, but the end result of something like that is typically smearing or added sibilance.

With the cost of digital players these days, it wouldn't break the bank to simply try a new player. If you can find something that you like at Best Buy or Circuit City, you'll even have 30 days to see if the player was the real problem or not. Sean
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Welcome to the "perfect sound" world of CD my friend. The veil has just been lifted from your ears and you will never fall for marketing hype again!
But to answer your question, modern mass market CDs are poor quality junk for the most part. The problem is that even the guys that try to do it right are limited by the inherent nature of the technology. Digital samples the music. Therefore, by definition, sometimes it is not swampling and there is no way to replace this missing information (regardless of "upsampling" baloney)
Fortunately there is a cure. Its called a record and they are making better ones today than they ever have before.
CDs are for the car.

The NAD C720, which is based on the C320, will come alive with the right CD player. I had the most success with the Music Hall CD25 cd player. The combination was magical. See my remarks for my 2 channel HT system. With totally respectable CD players like the Pioneer PD 65 and the SONY SCD 555ES, the NAD C320 sounded OK, but nothing like the Music Hall. As for cables, the NAD/Music Hall combination worked very well with Signal Cable cables & interconnects and Better Cables interconnects.

Regards, Rich