CD sound quality

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

Listen to Rrcpa he is the one that got the answer to your question right. In fact vinyl is so much more superior to digital that I just sold my $8,000 cd player because it didn't even come close to my record player.

Nrostov:

My hunch is that bonvoyage has a CD collection and not a vinyl collection, if for no other reason than the NAD does not offer a phono input. Also, I am not sure how applicable a discussion about selling an 8K cd player is when the other person's system costs $1500 tops. At the $8K level for a CD player, you are talking about a degree of playback resolution where if your system does not have excellent synergy, everything that is wrong will be magnified so much more so. (Roy Hall would chuckle quite a bit with this thread).

I am not sure introducing the "which medium is superior" provides an answer for someone who is asking ... I am into CD's and I am getting this ... can I make it better? True ... most CD's are not mastered as well as they could be. Truth be told though, the same holds true for a lot of vinyl ... unless you are getting audiophile vinyl pressings. Why not just introduce the "tubes vs solid state" and "separates vs integrated" superiority debates, while we are at it?

Simply put, a cheap DVD player and basic cables will degrade the sound of most decent systems quite a bit. Even though NAD states in its literature that cables are not that big a factor, in my experience they were with the NAD C320. I found that Better Cable Silver Serpent interconnects and Signal Cable Classic Speaker Cables worked very well when the NAD was paired with AR 302; NHT SB2; and Wharfedale Diamond 9.2 speakers and a Music Hall MMF CD 25 cd player. The system was very clear sounding with both good detail and musicality.

Hope this helps.

Regards, Rich