Start saying your goodbyes to your car’s CD player

[GCrites]

Sometimes I'd rather just buy a CD than get an iTunes headache. I get them every time I use it.

[Scott5114]

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.

You could always just burn the digital files to CDs when you get them and then you have your physical copy.

[rschen7754]

The CD player has moving parts, which probably don't react well to lots of offroading. Besides, they have nowhere near the capacity of a MP3 player... and with Bluetooth I don't even have to take my phone out of my pocket.

[Takumi]

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.

You could always just burn the digital files to CDs when you get them and then you have your physical copy.

That's what I usually prefer to do. Generally the only time I buy CDs anymore is when they're direct from the label and/or signed by the artist, but they're still my preferred medium when driving. I'm not into Pandora/Spotify/etc, and a lot of what I listen to isn't on there anyway.

[Pete from Boston]

I get CDs from bands.  I mean, those digital download cards are a nice idea, but they get lost.  CDs are still the most effective way for a band to put their music directly into the hands of the people going out to see them.

[NJRoadfan]

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.

Discs have been superseded by solid state storage for the most part in cars. My car came with the following options
-Dual SDHD card slots (can take up to 32GB cards and will play uncompressed WAV files)
-In dash jukebox with roughly 25GB of free space. You can rip media directly off CDs or other connected devices with it.
-The DVD player which can read data discs
-A2DP Bluetooth audio streaming from a cell phone or equipped iPod.
-The "Audi music interface" in the glove box. This takes cables for iPod (30 and lightning), USB, aux-in (including video). VW uses a similar connection in their cars, so that is where the missing aux-in went.
-The radio. It has HD Radio and Sirius, but alas no AM Stereo.

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.

Very few cars today have stereos that aren't integrated into the rest of the car's systems and sitting in a standard DIN mount in the dash.

[1995hoo]

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.

You could always just burn the digital files to CDs when you get them and then you have your physical copy.

If you buy the files from iTunes, as many people do, they're still lower-fidelity. Sources like HDTracks are a different matter.

iTunes is the ideal source for people more concerned with convenience that with how their music sounds. Unfortunately, a lot of younger people these days have been brainwashed to think that's all that matters.

[US 41]

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.

You could always just burn the digital files to CDs when you get them and then you have your physical copy.

If you buy the files from iTunes, as many people do, they're still lower-fidelity. Sources like HDTracks are a different matter.

iTunes is the ideal source for people more concerned with convenience that with how their music sounds. Unfortunately, a lot of younger people these days have been brainwashed to think that's all that matters.

I know a lot of younger people who just download their music for free and don't mess with Itunes. The YTD Downloader seems to be the most popular among them.

[xcellntbuy]

We need to go back to records.

Amen!

[seicer]

iTunes has other issues as well. It's just not a simple interface and transferring files between devices is a pain. It's why I dumped it long ago and went to a cloud (and physical file) service, like Spotify. And with Spotify, you have the option of playing music at 320 kbps. A radio is generally 128 kbps, and a MP3/CD file is around 160 kbps. Even in some high end audio systems, there is no noticeable difference in sound quality between Spotify and a CD.

[cjk374]

Call me old.  Call me stubborn.  I hate change.  I am not technologically up to date.  I have a dumb-phone, just "moved up" to CDs about 10 years ago (by installing a radio/CD player in my '83 Grand Prix) and I actually own several CDs.  I am not a fan of CD players disappearing from new cars.  It's just not fair for those of us who don't try to keep up w/Mr. Roboto and Rosie the robot maid from the Jetsons.

Bandit and xcellntbuy...bring back vinyl records!   

[Pete from Boston]

I have a tape deck that doesn't work and a radio where the display is dead so I count clicks from presets.  Both were like that when I bought the truck.  Honestly doesn't bother me enough to do anything about it.

[Pete from Boston]

iTunes has other issues as well. It's just not a simple interface and transferring files between devices is a pain. It's why I dumped it long ago and went to a cloud (and physical file) service, like Spotify. And with Spotify, you have the option of playing music at 320 kbps. A radio is generally 128 kbps, and a MP3/CD file is around 160 kbps. Even in some high end audio systems, there is no noticeable difference in sound quality between Spotify and a CD.

Even better, those pesky artists whose occupation is to make the music get even less from Spotify than from the CD sale, which was little to begin with so you can let yourself off the hook.

[US71]

Can you even still buy CDs?

I rarely do. I download MP3's and back them up on an external HD. I have an MP3 port in my new van so have been using it to play music.

[bugo]

SWIM is into piracy, and he said the best place to find music is on Soulseek. You can find pretty much anything there including some very obscure stuff.

[spooky]

Bandit and xcellntbuy...bring back vinyl records!   

That's happening.

[1995hoo]

Vinyl records never really disappeared, they just sold less for a while. In the context of this thread, though, where the focus is on playing music in the car, I think there are pretty good reasons for not trying to play LPs there!

[Brandon]

Vinyl records never really disappeared, they just sold less for a while. In the context of this thread, though, where the focus is on playing music in the car, I think there are pretty good reasons for not trying to play LPs there!

Oh, like this?

Highway Hi-Fi.

http://imperialclub.com/Repair/Accessories/HiWay/Chrysler.htm

http://ookworld.com/high-tech-in-the-1950%E2%80%B2s-highway-hi-fi-where-the-vinyl-meets-the-road-part-5/

[Pete from Boston]

Vinyl records never really disappeared, they just sold less for a while. In the context of this thread, though, where the focus is on playing music in the car, I think there are pretty good reasons for not trying to play LPs there!

Nonsense.  Just ask rising star Cassius Clay:

[oscar]

The CD player has moving parts, which probably don't react well to lots of offroading.

My 4x4 pickup truck has a standard in-dash CD player with six-disc changer.  While I've not done any serious off-roading, I've driven it on a few thousand miles of rough unpaved roads.  I haven't tried to play a CD while doing that, but the player survived the drives with no problems after I got back on pavement.

[OCGuy81]

I'm okay with it.  I have one in my car, but I'm either listening to my itunes library, or listening to the radio.  I've had my current car 2 years and never put a CD in.

Doesn't help most of my music collection is digital nowadays.  Think the last time I bought a CD was around 2000.  Then came the good ole days of Napster!

[1995hoo]

Vinyl records never really disappeared, they just sold less for a while. In the context of this thread, though, where the focus is on playing music in the car, I think there are pretty good reasons for not trying to play LPs there!

Nonsense.  Just ask rising star Cassius Clay:

I've seen that picture before, but from what I understand, it didn't play very well. Plus that looks like a 45. Can you imagine what a hassle it would be to change 45s constantly while driving? The longest single track I'm aware of having been released on a 45 was Bruce Springsteen's live version of "Incident on 57th Street," released as the B-side of the "Fire" 45 in 1986. "Incident" was 10:07. So figure you'd be changing the record (or at least turning it over) every 10 minutes or more often. Doesn't seem too practical to me. (I don't know whether any EPs ever had sides longer than 10 minutes long, but EPs were never all that successful in the US anyway. I think they were most popular in France, though I have no idea why.)

[formulanone]

Sounds to me that in-dash vinyl was only slightly more popular than Digital Compact Cassettes.

[PHLBOS]

Call me old.  Call me stubborn.  I hate change.  I am not technologically up to date.  I have a dumb-phone, just "moved up" to CDs about 10 years ago (by installing a radio/CD player in my '83 Grand Prix) and I actually own several CDs.  I am not a fan of CD players disappearing from new cars.  It's just not fair for those of us who don't try to keep up w/Mr. Roboto and Rosie the robot maid from the Jetsons.

^^This in spades. 

I only started buying CDs (mostly through Amazon.com) when I bought my 2007 Mustang (in Aug. 2007), which had a 6-CD player as well as a Line In port for I-pods and so forth.  My '97 Crown Vic. (that I factory ordered) just has a cassette player.  While a single CD player was an option for that model year; I stayed with the cassette player at the time due to my having an active collection of cassettes back then (Nov. 1996).

The factory dual cassette/CD players didn't become available until the '99 model year for the Crown Vics/Grand Marquis'; had such been available 2 model years earlier, I would have definitely opted for such.  I presently do have a converter device that can play CDs via the car's cassette player.  My brother uses a similar device to play his I-pod through his '83 Pontiac Parisienne's cassette player.

I know that Ford either phased out or dropped the 6-CD players after 2011 on some models (at least on the Flex) but still offers single-CD players with a Line-In port.

[algorerhythms]

Bandit and xcellntbuy...bring back vinyl records!   

That's happening.