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Start saying your goodbyes to your car’s CD player

Started by ZLoth, January 24, 2015, 12:06:56 PM

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ZLoth

From A.V. Club:

Start saying your goodbyes to your car's CD player
QuoteAs the Los Angeles Times reports, Hyundai has announced that its 2016 line of cars will feature a new touchscreen audio system that communes via Bluetooth with your Apple or Android phones and can support third-party apps–but doesn't take CDs. And while it's only certain models that will take on the new Display Audio System at first, it's yet another portent for an eventual end to the technology, with in-car CD players seemingly destined to go the way of tape decks, eight-tracks, and having a banjo player on your rumble seat. After all, there is the old familiar saying, "As Hyundai goes, so goes Americans who drive Hyundais because they just sort of got talked into it at Carmax."
FULL ARTICLE HERE

From Los Angeles Times:

Hyundai abandoning car CD players: Am I the only one still listening?
QuoteCould car compact disc players soon become a thing of the past? For Hyundai the answer looks to be yes.

At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week, the carmaker debuted its new take on the in-dash audio console.

Hyundai's new Display Audio System features a flashy touchscreen interface that doesn't include a CD player. Instead it's a Bluetooth-driven display that can be synced to Apple or Android phones and will support third-party apps. So navigation, calls, podcasts, news, sports and whatever else you put on your mobile phone are now at your fingertips in the car.
FULL ARTICLE HERE
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oscar

Quote from: ZLoth on January 24, 2015, 12:06:56 PM
From A.V. Club:

Start saying your goodbyes to your car's CD player
QuoteAs the Los Angeles Times reports, Hyundai has announced that its 2016 line of cars will feature a new touchscreen audio system that communes via Bluetooth with your Apple or Android phones and can support third-party apps–but doesn't take CDs. And while it's only certain models that will take on the new Display Audio System at first, it's yet another portent for an eventual end to the technology, with in-car CD players seemingly destined to go the way of tape decks, eight-tracks, and having a banjo player on your rumble seat. After all, there is the old familiar saying, "As Hyundai goes, so goes Americans who drive Hyundais because they just sort of got talked into it at Carmax."

Thanks for the warning.  Yet another reason for me to keep running my cars until they die.
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algorerhythms

Quote from: ZLoth on January 24, 2015, 12:06:56 PM
From A.V. Club:

Start saying your goodbyes to your car's CD player
QuoteAs the Los Angeles Times reports, Hyundai has announced that its 2016 line of cars will feature a new touchscreen audio system that communes via Bluetooth with your Apple or Android phones and can support third-party apps–but doesn't take CDs. And while it's only certain models that will take on the new Display Audio System at first, it's yet another portent for an eventual end to the technology, with in-car CD players seemingly destined to go the way of tape decks, eight-tracks, and having a banjo player on your rumble seat. After all, there is the old familiar saying, "As Hyundai goes, so goes Americans who drive Hyundais because they just sort of got talked into it at Carmax."
FULL ARTICLE HERE

I have it on good authority (relatives from West Virginia), that having a banjo player on your rumble seat will never, ever go out of style.

Pete from Boston


NJRoadfan

My car already doesn't have a CD player.... its actually a DVD player :P

US 41

I'm not sure why they would get rid of CD players in cars. They don't take up that much space and you can still buy new albums that are on a CD. Heck just go to a Super Walmart where they have several isles of new CDs for sale. I just bought a new CD last week.
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realjd


SignGeek101

It doesn't surprise me. I don't drive much, but when I do, I don't bring a CD with me or keep one in the car. It's easier listening off your phone or on the radio (despite the fact that the radio has bad music and plenty of ads IMO).

I think it was just a matter of time. I can't see cars in 15 years from now still having CD players.

US81

Looks like an interface that might actually make enforcement of the hands-free-only-do-no-touch-the-cell-phone laws kind of moot.

1995hoo

I'd already have a problem if I had to replace my car because my current stereo plays DVD-Audio and I love it. While the format flopped commercially, I have software to burn my own DVD-Audio discs and I do so in order to take advantage of the format's high storage capacity and to put high-rez music on something I can play in the car. The mixed DVD I burned last fall prior to our trip south for Christmas played for a good seven hours without repeating anything. High-rez discs don't allow for storing as much music, of course, but they blow away the crappy sound you get with Bluetooth streaming or lossy-compressed .MP3 or the like.

How times change.....40 years ago, a lot of people's music sounded crummy due to inferior stereo equipment. Nowadays, a lot of people's music sounds crummy from the get-go because they encode it in the wrong format.

I'm guessing if/when the time comes for a new car (which I hope won't be for a long time) I may wind up exploring aftermarket stereos.
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Brandon

Quote from: realjd on January 24, 2015, 03:54:46 PM
Can you even still buy CDs?

Yes, and in a lot of places.  Amazingly, you can even buy used ones!  What a concept.
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Roadrunner75

I have tons of CDs and still buy them - both new and used - but I typically drive to the Ipod via the Aux in jack (uploaded from CDs mostly).  I hadn't actually used the CD player in awhile and when I put in a CD recently, it ejected it immediately and insisted there was already a CD in the unit.  Now every time I turn the unit on, half the time it says there is one already in.

I still want full albums and good sound quality (at least at home), and I'll take the hit in the car.  The bad speaker placement and stock unit sound, coupled with half the car rattling all the time make any loss of sound quality from decently encoded MP3s (256 bit rate +) minimal.

My wife, however, drives around to CDs as her car has no Aux jack, and I'm too lazy to get around to rigging something up through the unused rear changer port or some other solution.

US81

Quote from: Brandon on January 24, 2015, 05:13:44 PM
Quote from: realjd on January 24, 2015, 03:54:46 PM
Can you even still buy CDs?

Yes, and in a lot of places.  Amazingly, you can even buy used ones!  What a concept.

I buy most of my audio books in the used book store market. If I don't like to book enough to keep it, I can resell it and recoup some of the expense.

Musically, I tend to like offbeat stuff, also fun and easy to find on used CD racks.

jeffandnicole

Quote from: US 41 on January 24, 2015, 03:53:59 PM
I'm not sure why they would get rid of CD players in cars. They don't take up that much space and you can still buy new albums that are on a CD. Heck just go to a Super Walmart where they have several isles of new CDs for sale. I just bought a new CD last week.

Tape decks didn't take up much room either. I imagine CD players have lasted in cars for the sole reason that they're cheap to add to a sound system. I doubt most people use them.

Remember when entire stores were dedicated to music, not a few aisles or bins at Walmart?

seicer

Good riddens.

I haven't used a CD in years, although my Subaru came with a player. I use Bluetooth and my iPhone to play Spotify. I pay for the premium version for $10/month and have a virtually unlimited range of music through their great discovery service (Browse and Radio), and can still put physical tracks on it via my Mac (from a CD, iTunes and else). When it syncs to my phone over WiFi, it stores a physical copy on my phone, which isn't a problem, and allows me to not use data while on the road.

I only have a handful of CD's, and they are in storage and will probably never be used again. All of them are on Spotify or have long since been synced.

I remember when we bought our Nissan Pathfinder new in 2003. It came with a CD player and a tape deck. The tape deck actually comes in handy to play music from my iPhone since it doesn't have an AUX input jack for my bluetooth device.

CD's are always more expensive and the selection is always less than what you can find on Spotify or any similar application, like iHeartRadio.

Roadrunner75

Quote from: jeffandnicole on January 24, 2015, 06:04:22 PM
Remember when entire stores were dedicated to music, not a few aisles or bins at Walmart?
Pretty much just a handful of independents now.  Best Buy was the last big chain it seemed to have a reasonable selection of new CDs.  I used to make quite a lot of trips to independent record stores.  Now it's the rare treat to get up to Princeton Record Exchange (always walking out with a stack of $1/$2 CDs) or maybe Vintage Vinyl.

Roadrunner75

Quote from: Sherman Cahal on January 24, 2015, 06:12:43 PM
CD's are always more expensive and the selection is always less than what you can find on Spotify or any similar application, like iHeartRadio.
You get what you pay for.  I still like the liner notes/etc, and at least having good sound quality, even if I don't always take advantage of it when uploading to my Ipod.  Selection is still good if you buy online, and Amazon sells many CDs with a feature where it will also let you download MP3 versions immediately while you wait for the disc.  And full MP3 albums sold online still aren't always that much cheaper than CDs.

Pete from Boston


Quote from: Sherman Cahal on January 24, 2015, 06:12:43 PMCD's are always more expensive and the selection is always less than what you can find on Spotify or any similar application, like iHeartRadio.

IHeartRadio = Clear Channel.  Fuck that action.  They've done enough to dumb down music and broadcasting on their own.  They certainly do not need more support in making the world a worse place for music and radio.

formulanone

It's the lack of an AUX port that annoys me (VW and Mitsubishi seem to be phasing them out). Bluetooth + Data signal uses up battery life, but on the other hand, it seems that USB ports are becoming more and more ubiquitous.

I still buy a few CDs per year, and it's nice to pop them in and have a listen, rather than waiting to get home and encode it. But if the larger market doesn't have a use for them, they're just going to disappear.

Pete from Boston

Quote from: formulanone on January 24, 2015, 07:13:16 PM
It's the lack of an AUX port that annoys me (VW and Mitsubishi seem to be phasing them out). Bluetooth + Data signal uses up battery life, but on the other hand, it seems that USB ports are becoming more and more ubiquitous.

USB ports can be problematic.  On many cars, plugging via USB requires the music to be accessed through the radio interface, which is often poorly designed for the purposes of browsing music on a portable device.  Worse yet, most of the ones I have used simply pick the first track alphabetically and start playing it.  This can make one sick of one's first song very quickly. 

I would greatly prefer a USB connection that functioned like an aux port.  Or, better yet, why the hell isn't Apple making in-dash audio (or anything else) systems yet?


formulanone

#21
Quote from: Pete from Boston on January 24, 2015, 07:30:17 PM
Quote from: formulanone on January 24, 2015, 07:13:16 PM
It's the lack of an AUX port that annoys me (VW and Mitsubishi seem to be phasing them out). Bluetooth + Data signal uses up battery life, but on the other hand, it seems that USB ports are becoming more and more ubiquitous.

USB ports can be problematic.  On many cars, plugging via USB requires the music to be accessed through the radio interface, which is often poorly designed for the purposes of browsing music on a portable device.  Worse yet, most of the ones I have used simply pick the first track alphabetically and start playing it.  This can make one sick of one's first song very quickly.

That's some of the cars I've rented; they go through the catalog on my iPod, but 8000 songs takes 10 minutes to sort every time you start up the car...so there's no sound for a while. Some others don't take very long to sort, but I guess it depends on how it responds to the iPod, some force you to use the head unit's interface/buttons, and others allow some freedom to use either the MP3 player's controls or the steering wheel's controls or the radio unit's buttons.

Speaking of Hyundais, the 2011-13 Elantra/Sonatas would come up with odd filenames when you popped in your iPod (on all random songs) through the USB port:



(...the song was Rush's Tom Sawyer, BTW)

QuoteI would greatly prefer a USB connection that functioned like an aux port.

See above.

Stratuscaster

The JVC aftermarket head unit in my car will play CDs, but the CD slot is used more for holding the mount to my cell phone or iPod. (The "Grip" model found at this link: http://www.amazon.com/Mountek-nGroove-Universal-Phones-Devices/dp/B004G1L52Q }

It has a USB port that will control an iPod/iPhone - but as noted by others, it doesn't work that well. It also reads USB flash drives and that's where my music now lives. The iPod is connected to the AUX port and is used exclusively for listening to podcasts (it's only got 8GB capacity.)

I picked up a "mech-less" head unit to go into the wife's van. Not only does it not have a CD player, it doesn't have an AM tuner in it either. Just FM, USB, AUX, and an SD card slot. Picked it up pre-holidays at Fry's for $20.

hbelkins

I prefer buying CDs to digital music files. With CDs, you always have a physical copy of your music which you can rip to digital, or make a copy to give to friends play the homemade version and store the one you bought in a safe place.

I prefer an AUX jack to a Bluetooth connection. For one, what if your device is already linked to a BT device, such as a BT keyboard for an iPhone or iPad? And there's the fact that the iPod Classic doesn't have Bluetooth onboard.

The first vehicle I ever owned with a CD player was my 2000 Toyota truck, which had a dual CD/cassette player. I used both, since I had a bunch of cassettes, and a cassette adapter for my digital music players (first an Archos Jukebox; later my iPod). I previously used a cassette adapter to play CDs in my older vehicles through a Discman portable CD player; as they seemed to work better than FM modulators. I ended up replacing the factory unit in my truck with a JVC that has both an AUX port (which I could use to play cassettes with my old Sony Walkman if I wanted) and a USB port that will work with a USB stick but I use with my iPod.

The problem with Spotify, Pandora or any of those services is that they require a cellular signal in order to work. Most of eastern Kentucky has terrible cell phone reception.


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briantroutman

Quote from: Pete from Boston on January 24, 2015, 07:30:17 PM
I would greatly prefer a USB connection that functioned like an aux port.  Or, better yet, why the hell isn't Apple making in-dash audio (or anything else) systems yet?

It's happening. That's basically the point of Apple's CarPlay and the equivalent Android Auto–it provides a standard way for car head units to display app information, maps, media, and so on.



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