My 5 year old NAD C514 broke, and new C541 was ordered from World-Exchange.com in NJ, that saved 45$ compared to 450$ retail and the shipping was in line with the promise.

The main advantage over C541 are support for HDCD ( for example, "Sailing to Philadelphia" by Mark Knopfler), superb D/A converter and optical output.

I did a copy of the above mentioned music CD and placed the original into C541 and the copy into SONY DVD DVP-S550D with 24-bit D/A(~400$). Both sources were connected through analog to NAD 116 pre-amplifier with output to NAD 214 + a pair of 804 speakers.

Both sources sound very well in general, however in complex parts, where a number of instruments was playing concurrently, C541 has a noticeable advantage in the clarity, distinquish of the sounds composing the overall scene. SONY was squizing the sounds of instruments in complex scenes together producing something more like noise.

C541 provides audibly more depth in overall sound picture, compared to the SONY player, where the music sounds flat, with C541 the music gets depth and 3D, in other words much more realistic. I supposed it was partly because of HDCD.
However listening to a regular CD "A new Standard" by Steve Tyrell confirmed the above!

The CD transport opens/closes 2-3 times slower and quiter then on C520, so switching CDs fast is not an option. Also I'd like the buttons on the C541 to need less effort to make them click.

The above is the comparison I experienced with my wife, your experience before purchase should be live in a Hi-Fi shop between different CD players.

On reliability note, C541 has a switch mechanism to lock CD transport mechanics for transportation. I really appreciate that, as the my old C514 had the transport mechanism broken.

NAD expanded the display, added RANDOM and REPEAT play functions. I used that regularly.

Remote unit it fun by itself, but I use mainly the one from NAD 116 for both CD and volume control.

The player has optical output, so some when in the future it possible get a up-to-date external D/A converter.



Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 404