newbie needs to know what next...

Hi Newbie:

Better Cables is a company that makes reasonably priced interconnects. IMO a significant step up from Monster and certainly light years ahead of the ones provided with your components. Assuming your receiver has 5.1 capability, a center channel speaker is also a must. Unlike stereo imaging that can give a percieved center, off center listening positions will not hear a "center" in the center without a speaker in that position. The bigger the display and the wider the L and R speaker positions, the more "off" the center will seem in a two channel set up(for the people listening off to the left or right). And in a 5.1 mix, there is signal on that track designated for the speaker in the center. Remember, a 5.1 soundtrack has five DIFFERENT channels just like Stereo has TWO different channels. I've made some assumptions here. First that your DVD player can read a Dolby digital soundtrack (most do) and that your receiver can decode it and has outputs for 5 speakers. Of course if your NAD cd player cannot play dvd's or sacd's or dvd audio(multi-channel music formats) you will only get stereo and all this discussion about centers is moot. Since you mentioned screen sound I assume you have a dvd player.
Tell me more about what your goals are. It's tough to put together a good "movie" system and still have a good two channel set up since the mixing parameters in the studio are after very different results. I've been in this for a lot of years and maybe I can help.

Slow down buddy. you have yourself a stereo (two channel) receiver. The receiver and the CD player are both a few years old.

The following are true of your current set-up:
1)You will benefit very little from fancy cables (put that money in savings for equipment upgrades).
2)You can not do surround sound and do not need a center channel speaker.
3)If the mood struck you, you could add a subwoofer to your current set-up via speaker-level inputs.

No offence intended whatsoever, but you may want to hold off on new equipment purchases until you learn a little more about the various capabilities of different peices of audio gear. Find a local dealer that is willing to spend a little time teaching you the basics and buy something from him. A good dealer can save you lots of money by selling you equipment that fills your needs.

Good luck!

I agree with the advice to slow down. First of all, you have to decide if you want the same system to do music and movies. If you have the room it may make sense to separate them. After weighing our own priorities we ended up choosing a high quality stereo system in one room, and a less expensive home theater (HT) in another. We felt we did not need a "stereo-quality" HT, so it saved some money. It also allows one person to listen to music and another to watch news/movie if they are in different moods.

If you end up changing the same system to HT, then you will need an HT receiver and extra speakers which can be less expensive KEF models. Obviously, you will need a dvd player and also hook up your tv in order to watch movies.