Bogsle,
Hindi ko nga na-gets yung bad joke eh..
Anyway, I have achieved sonic nirvana already. My system really sounds the best now than ever before. Here are the things that make me listen to CDs every morning while eating breakfast, and at night with the lights switched off except for the Christmas tree lights:
1) Imaging. I just bought the Acoustic Piano CD and it was truly enjoyable. There's this song from the Corrs where I was shocked to hear the 3 sisters in a wide soundstage while the brother was playing the piano at the back. It was easy to identify where the 3 sisters were.
Most of my CDs now have great imaging. Before, there were times when the voice would sometimes drift to the right. But now, it's firmly centered (unless the singer really moved).
2) Tonality and Scale. Voices of both male and female singers sound real and life-like in scale. It didn't shout at me anymore. The sibilance disappeared and I really can listen for hours already. I only stop when I'm too sleepy already. The sound of vocals are just sooooo sweeeeeet.
3) Detail. Ohhhhhh. Ahhhhhhh. The details that I hear now with the C542 and the Dynaudio really gives me pleasure. The sounds of cymbals and triangles and percussion is very tight and real. You can hear the decay and echoes of these instruments.
4) Bass is also enjoyable now and it sounds tight and musical. Bass lacked in my system before and I thought it was because I only had bookshelves. With the C542, the bass now has presence.
I now enjoy listening to a lot of my CDs from Audiophile, to local compilations, to acoustic, to Christmas, to Christian, to New Wave, kahit ano!
So in summary, I'm really happy with the NAD C542 and I'm glad that I decided to buy this again. For those with a P30k maximum budget, I would strongly recommend this. It's really a steal at P18,000 and I would have to commend Studio Systems for not overpricing this great cd player. I'm so happy with this CD player that I'm now considering waiting for the next generation NAD DVD-Audio player when it comes out.
By the way, I prefer buying HDCD now more than SACD or DVD-Audio because of this player.
Yun lang, I just wanted to express my hapiness.