I hear a lot about how good the system sound with a DVD-A disk. But can anyone tell if it sounds good with a standard CD?

 

Yes, it sounds fine.

 

Agreed, good treble, reasonably crisp bass and excellent staging.

Of course, I hope the CD you use to test this is either an original or is ripped from an original, not crappy MP3s turned back into a CD.

 

+1 to all of that ^

Sounds especially great when you get some more crisp bass behind that treble

 

It really depends on the source material. A badly-recorded CD won't suddenly sound good, and bad music is just plain bad music (I recognize that's a matter of taste, of course). A well-recorded CD will sound just fine. The point about converted .MP3s is dead-on as well. .MP3 is a lossy compressed format, meaning the software literally deletes portions of the data. Once it's gone, you'll never get it back.

 

My favorite test song is Hotel California by The Eagles. The lyrics and instruments have their highs, lows and change positions.

 

If you use a purchased, pre-recorded CD, the head unit will separate your sound (my '07 does-I'm not sure if the '04 has the same head unit or not). I'm not sure if a recorded CD (that you personally made) will have the same results.