Not necessarily.
I believe the master clock of a CD player is vitally important as it is accepted that clock jitter in a digital system is extremely detrimental. Jitter is very difficult to measure. I can't do it at home, and can only get an idea with the kit in work (it's not designed to do it) but when I was doing the CD67, I did note a reduction in jitter when I rejigged the clock. I bonded the crystal to the board, grounded the can, fitted a grommet over the can, and moved the components closer to the crystal so all the interconnecting tracks where shortened. It was hard to quantify the difference as my view of the jitter was a visual blurring of the edges of the clock waveform which came into better focus after the mods (told you the test kit wasn't ideal!) but the subjective change was very similar to yours. I also noticed what could be described as better focus, and more solidity to imagery.