When was the last time you played a CD in your car?

[ZLoth]

This is a little of an offshoot from my post on XP, but here goes....

When was the last time you played a physical CD in your car?

Note... this is NOT "a CD that I ripped and play back on my audio player". I'm talking about an actual physical CD that you take to your car and played.

For me, it was last September on my Chevy Malibu. I was going on a week-long road trip, and purchased some audiobooks on CD. I tried my CD player which I hadn't used in quite a while, and the player jammed up. The cost to fix the player was going to be $300, verses the $100 I spent to put in a FM modulator and play it back through a portable device.

Now, I did purchase a new car last week, and I did test out the CD player just to make sure it works. But, I was more interested in the Bluetooth connection and the auxiliary audio input in the car than the actual CD player.

[hotdogPi]

Sometime in 2013.

Additionally, almost all of my music from iTunes is from a CD put into the computer.

[corco]

About three weeks ago. My Hondoo doesn't have  a cassette player, and my iPod only works with a cassette adapter. I'm too cheap to buy one of those radio things, so I burned one CD to get me through those times where there was nothing interesting to listen to on the radio.

[getemngo]

Whenever my CD changer broke last year. I have both a 12-disc changer and a cassette player (Pontiacs are weird), but the cassette player doesn't work well with my iPod adapter. It periodically spits it out, saying the tape is jammed.

Not that I use the iPod much anyway - it's probably been two or three years. It's pre-iPhone, and I don't have a smartphone either.

So, I still listen to music like it's 2006. In the car: radio for now. On the computer: iTunes or YouTube playlists.

[6a]

I make data CDs and play those, it's like having a 60-CD player.

[Jardine]

Don't laugh, I played some Christmas music on a CD in my work van just a couple days ago.

[getemngo]

Don't laugh, I played some Christmas music on a CD in my work van just a couple days ago.

I honestly crave Christmas music the most in May/June, and sometimes again around Labor Day.

[Duke87]

If we're requiring that it be *my* car, then the answer is two weeks ago on the way to and from the Delmarva meet. If any car will do, I played plenty of CDs on the way to and from Nashville last weekend.

I keep a decent sized box of CDs in my car. Some of them original from the record companies, some of them burned CD-Rs. I normally don't listen to music when driving locally but when I go on road trips, this is where my music comes from. I do not own an mp3 player other than my computer, so in the car CDs are my only option.

[Takumi]

Yesterday, only because I haven't driven today. I prefer CDs to digital in the car.

[kurumi]

A couple months ago: language CDs (Bahasa Indonesia) from the library. But the new car has bluetooth audio, so I get music from either the radio or the phone

[signalman]

I really don't remember.  It's been a while.  I don't own an mp3 player, so I play CDs when I travel.  Like Anthony, I don't listen to the radio or a CD when driving locally.  Sadly, I haven't taken a road trip in quite a while.

[hbelkins]

Couple of weeks ago. I played a little bit of the most recent Van Halen CD while on my way from a work-related meeting to the office.

[Road Hog]

One of my cars (a 2000 Tahoe) has a cassette player in it. Last time I used it was playing an old Beastie Boys tape about the time MCA died. The quality of the sound was surprisingly good.

My newer car has a CD player and an aux port which I plug my iPhone into. I can listen to radio stations from all over the world on it or run Pandora or play MP3s, which is very cool.

[Alps]

About 2 weeks ago. I bring in a few CDs when I need particular music in my life.

[1995hoo]

Friday. I haven't driven anywhere yesterday or today.

Yesterday, only because I haven't driven today. I prefer CDs to digital in the car.

CDs are digital.

[Pete from Boston]

Three and a half years ago.  Then I switched to a vehicle with a radio with a non-working cassette deck, no working display, an AM/FM button that switches only to AM, and a clock button that switches it back to FM.  Also no working bass, treble, or balance.

I've driven 50,000 miles like that and have no real complaints.

[oscar]

For me, probably some time in mid-March, during a particularly boring part of my trip to the St. Louis meet via Brownsville TX and Deming NM (maybe US 54 in NM headed northeast, which was pretty dull).  I usually don't listen to anything while driving, except for news and political commentary on satellite radio, and traffic/weather reports on satellite or AM.  It takes a lot of boredom, plus not much on the news channels (Saturdays, mid-day other days of the week), to get me to call up one of the six music discs (car) or three (truck) I keep loaded in the CD changers.

[pianocello]

Probably sometime in 2012. I just haven't had a need for them. First of all, I haven't driven since August except when I was on break, and all of my short-distance trips go through reliabe radio markets (Iowa City/Cedar Rapids, Quad Cities, Peru/LaSalle, Chicagoland).

[Brandon]

Just yesterday.  Except that it is an mp3 disc i ripped from other CDs I own.  The car AM/FM/SiriusXM/CD/mp3/Auxiliary/USB port radio plays mp3 discs up to 255 songs per disc.

[Takumi]

Today, now that I've driven somewhere

CDs are digital.

I mean as opposed to using my phone or MP3 player in my car's aux jack. I just prefer physical media when possible.

[algorerhythms]

Never. My car only has a cassette tape player, but I never use it, either.

[briantroutman]

About a week ago, but that's just a coincidence. I have six burned CDs loaded into the in-dash changer as a backup in case I don't have my phone on me or don't have it plugged in for some reason, but I basically never listen to CDs.

But getting to the spirit of the question, I haven't been actively using CDs in about ten years. When I started driving around 2000, I had a 1990 Subaru Legacy, and coincidentally, that car's factory stereo had an aux jack–though for its era, the jack was intended for a Discman or MiniDisc player if you hadn't opted for the built-in CD player. I got my first iPod in 2002, but I pretty quickly stopped lugging my CD wallet out to the car when I went anywhere and just plugged in my iPod instead.

Now, it makes more sense than ever to play everything off my iPhone–in addition to saved tracks, I can stream music from Pandora, listen to live radio or podcasts, and more importantly, keep my phone charged so I don't have to worry about the battery lasting all day.

[1995hoo]

Just yesterday.  Except that it is an mp3 disc i ripped from other CDs I own.  The car AM/FM/SiriusXM/CD/mp3/Auxiliary/USB port radio plays mp3 discs up to 255 songs per disc.

My stereo supports a format called DVD-Audio, along with AM/FM/XM/CD/cassette. DVD-Audio flopped as a commercial format, but I have software to burn my own discs. The advantage to that is I can burn lossless music in either CD-standard resolution (16-bit/44.1-kHz) or in high-resolution (generally 24-bit/88.2- or 96-kHz .FLAC albums purchased from HDTracks.com), and if I use CD resolution (ripped to .WAV) I can fit substantially more than a single CD's worth of music on one disc due to the higher storage capacity of a DVD while not sacrificing sound quality due to lossy compression.

I store them all in these sleeves I get from Staples because then they fit nicely in the drawer underneath the stereo. I think I have about 20 discs in there, maybe four of which are CDs and the rest DVD-Audio. That's enough music to go across North America and back without repeating anything.

I only have a few commercial DVD-Audio discs. Listening to high-rez multichannel audio in the car is an interesting experience. In theory, it's easier for the audio engineer to make multichannel work in a vehicular environment because the seating positions are fixed, unlike at home. But road noise, coupled with the need to focus on driving, makes it a little bit pointless. It IS interesting to use the recording of the 1812 Overture released by the Telarc label to demonstrate one's system, however (this applies at home, too)–the sound of cannonballs flying past the passengers' heads makes for a fun time.

[realjd]

8 years ago maybe? Around the time I first got a satellite radio subscription. Nowadays is always satellite radio or audio streamed from my iphone over Bluetooth (podcasts, pandora, albums, etc.).

[jeffandnicole]

I always preferred the XM radio myself, but my wife has some CDs in both our cars she'll play on occasion.

Don't laugh, I played some Christmas music on a CD in my work van just a couple days ago.

I just took down my Christmas Trees from the front yard April 2.  I have them arranged nicely, and light red & white approaching Valentines Day, and green & white approaching St. Patricks Day, so they don't look too out of place.