I was out looking at cars this past week and was told by several dealers that cars manufactures have been doing away with cd players in lieu of streaming services. I know I'm old fashioned, but this was a shock to me. I play probably 90% of my music in cds in the car. This seems to be true. I even asked if it's possible to pay for a cd player installed and they said no. I guess this is the future of automobiles.
Rick
We bought a new car in 2014, and in five years never used the CD player once, except as a place to install a phone mount. Last year I replaced the head unit with a new one that has no CD slot. We had a 2005 Scion which likewise never saw any use of the CD slot.
Prior to that, in our 2002 vehicle, the "CD wallet" full of MP3 CDs was a critical accessory. Indeed, I had replaced the original head unit that only played audio CDs with one that could play MP3s so I could rip my collection and use CDs that held many house of music each.
It was that early adoption of CD-ripping that led to the obsolescence of physical discs in our cars. Having 32 or 64GB of music on a thumb drive, or even more on a phone, is just better in every way. The tiny quality edge of uncompressed music on an audio CD over a 320kbps MP3 in the noisy environment of a moving car is a distinction without a difference, and audio CDs have no other advantage in a car.
Today we have a nice Sony head unit with Android Auto in our 2015 Subaru, and we also keep a 64GB thumb drive full of music in the Sony's secondary USB port. It's about as good as automotive infotainment gets, especially with the great-sounding Focal speakers we also installed, IMO.
As long as I can get a USB port for a thumb drive I'll be happy.
Ian
Host of the Post-Avant Jazzcore Happy Hour on progrock.com
https://podcasts.progrock.com/post-a...re-happy-hour/
Gordon Haskell - "You've got to keep the groove in your head and play a load of bollocks instead"
I blame Wynton, what was the question?
There are only 10 types of people in the World, those who understand binary and those that don't.
This is what several people have told me they do. Without much loss of quality how much music can you fit on a thumb drive? Is it easy to access what you want to hear also. My one big problem is that I mostly pick out what I’m in the mood to hear in the morning before leaving for work and that could be anything within my thousands of cds.Originally Posted by NogbadTheBad
As I said I know that I’m out dated when it comes to technology and I’m not going to deny it.
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Cough
I use a 64GB thumb drive, or the 80+GB of music on my phone. That's many hundreds and hundreds of complete albums.
Different head units have different ways of finding/organizing. Browsing is a different kind of experience than it is with shelves of physical media, but if you know what you're looking for finding and playing it is simple.
For me, with my own collection, playlists have been the solution.
I don't know about a thumb drive, but I've got a Walkman with a 400 gig memory card in it.
So get a streaming service and then you get to choose between millions of CDs. Sounds like a pretty good way forward to me. And, no, the selection is not suddenly going to disappear as some people have spent the last few years predicting/hoping-for.
when I discovered this technology and got excited about it, my son laughed at me because it was considered passé. But that's what I use.
I like passé, it's generally modern enough for me and cheaper than cutting edge. Hell I'm 56, I'm well past passé, I'm vintage.
Ian
Host of the Post-Avant Jazzcore Happy Hour on progrock.com
https://podcasts.progrock.com/post-a...re-happy-hour/
Gordon Haskell - "You've got to keep the groove in your head and play a load of bollocks instead"
I blame Wynton, what was the question?
There are only 10 types of people in the World, those who understand binary and those that don't.
Your son (or at least many in his cohort) is probably comfortable with paying an immense cell phone bill to provide unlimited data for streaming, and may not even think of that as paying money for every song he plays in his car. Not even counting the monthly fees for the services. And probably owns very little in the way of physical media.
Most of us have lifetime collections and feel uncomfortable without the physical media or at least a clear path of ownership of our music libraries. It’s those libraries we want to access in our cars. The method, whether it’s a CD player, a thumb drive, or even 80 gigabytes of our own ripped CDs and digitized LPs on our phones (me), will seem passé to young people to whom the whole notion of physical or “owned” collections is antiquated. Pay-as-you-go is the 21st Century paradigm.
This is why I use USB. I live/work in an area with spotty mobile service (sometimes none at all), so streaming while driving is a no go. It’s a bit of a pity that my car won’t actually read USB drives past a certain size, but as I have mentioned in an earlier post, “cheating” by using an FM transmitter works for me.
Confirmed Bachelors: the dramedy hit of 1883...
That's assuming kids can be bothered pay their phone bills at all. My adult nephew ran up a couple of thousand on his. The carrier and/or collection agency called my parents, trying to track my nephew down for the money. My folks replied they had no idea where he was either.
"Well my son, life is like a beanstalk, isn't it?"--Dalai Lama
It's not about what the people want, it's about what they can make us settle for. Every time I try to test drive a new car, I am reminded of the Genesis song "Get 'Em Out By Friday," because I am well over four feet tall. Doesn't matter what music format you can or can't play when you can't drive the tiny vehicle.
Frog in boiling water
I adapted to the world of driving around with only a USB port for music. The car came with a free XM radio subscription for a few months, but aside from one of the jazz channels they don't have a damned thing worth listening to on it, and the Boston area has zero music channels that cater to anyone outside of those who settle for whatever's popular. Spare me the lecture about college stations where they might offer something interesting, but you have to make a career out of trying to find it. My only gripe about the USB route is that it only gets about half as loud as the radio, for some reason.
I have a CD player in my car but I mostly bluetooth my phone to the car and stream music. I'm still glad I have a CD player in my car as a backup.
I bought a new car in 2018 and when I was shopping around there were very few that had CD players. Part of the reason I ended up buying the car that I bought was that it did have one (along with a great sound system). Although I also have an MP3 player that I use in the car, I still like to listen to CD's and in my opinion they have better sound quality.
Bought a new car last year (2019 Honda Passport) and they did offer the CD player as an option and I added it with hesitation, I'm not about to start burning my 2,000 Cd's onto thumb drives and blank CDs are still like 25 cents, so it's easy to burn new playlists in iTunes...
I had a hire car while mine was being fixed recently, it only had a USB socket. I have no problem putting in a memory stick but it is nigh on impossible to navigate the music stored especially while driving. It really sucks.
That's never been a problem for me. I copy a bunch of albums to a thumb drive or SD card, and let them play through one after the other. No muss, no fuss.
"Well my son, life is like a beanstalk, isn't it?"--Dalai Lama
That's what I've been doing with my phone at work, lately. I pick a handful of albums I want, and I put them in the "now playing" playlist. So when one ends, the next one starts, as simple as that.
I suppose you could connect at portable CD-player to the usb port ?
If there still is portable cd-players around and a suitable interconnect...
That's the problem I have with thumb drives. It's ridiculous.putting in a memory stick but it is nigh on impossible to navigate the music stored especially while driving.
Bluetooth is the way to go. There are inexpensive Bluetooth MP3 players ($30-75 based on capacity) that will solve your interface problem if you don’t have a phone. Your phone can also stream Spotify or other services.
If your car does not have a Bluetooth interface, you can but an inexpensive Bluetooth receiver ($20) that plugs into your aux in.
WANTED: Sig-worthy quote.
Can you explain what is a blue tooth interface? Does it have a formal name? Where can I buy it?
What can this strange device be? When I touch it, it brings forth a sound (2112)
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