CD player not dead yet

[Whimsey]

My 2 last bought new vehicles proudly have cassette tape players with am/fm radio, stereo though

. My wife has brought me kicking and screaming kind of into more modern times. Using adapters that fit into the tape cassette slot I could first play CD's using a portable CD player. Now I can use our IPod and Smart Phone to play music through the cassette player. Sad to say I remember when 8 Track first came out, it was really technologically advanced. My how times have changed

.

Whimsey

 

[meep]

Originally Posted By: Rhymingmechanic
Originally Posted By: NateDN10
I do sometimes still listen to CDs, but I do it at work so I don't have to worry about changing CDs while driving. In my car I have an iPod with an FM transmitter since my car doesn't have a 3.5mm jack.


What FM transmitter are you using? I was looking for awhile, but none of the Amazon reviews gave me much confidence. It would be nice to use the iPod in my truck without messing with a cassette adapter.

I'm hanging onto CDs for the sound quality HerrStig mentioned. It might not be the case, but a physical disk also seems more permanent than relying on the memory in a computer or handheld gadget.



Physical CDs depending on the manufacturing process can have a lifespan. Burned media /certainly/ does and some Record Store CDs I've bought definitely look like they were burned then silk screened. Burned media begins to fail in 2-6 years, accelerated by heat and light. Considering how cheap mass storage has become, you could rip them down without compression at ~45MB per song and keep a true copy. But then you'd have to worry about bit rot among various file system formats.... can't win!!

I'll be an audio snob for a moment and tag on to (playfully) HerrStig's comments above --- I'd argue that at a higher allowed data rate, or less compression, compressed audio can still sound good enough to expose the limits in redbook audio (CD format). Nyquist's Theorem, among others, are alive and well, and some folks didn't like even CD quality because it has some artifacts that weren't present in the previous analog formats. Sadly, FM radio, lower SQ than redbook, is clean enough to reveal the cräp-tons of processing the studios apply to recorded musicians these days; some need it, but some don't--- so sometimes our choices of medium don't matter as much since the source material is questionable.

I don't know about today, because I can only reliably here up to about 14khz or just under, but I used to easily discern between 44khz (CD) and 48khz (DVD and entry-level pro audio). I could not tell from 48khz to 96. As I've gotten older, I can't hear some of the artifacts that other folks discern. But I hear enough to sometimes prefer that 4" speaker that breaks up before I can detect pitch correction or some other "talent" knob that personally annoys...

My favorite was high speed analog tape.... even a 4-track cassette, rolling at double-speed made smooth, sweet recordings......

/rant off

 

[HTSS_TR]

Originally Posted By: rfeir
Heck, I have a Sony Multi-channel cd/DVD/SACD/Dolby Digital, DTS player in several of my cars and continue to enjoy superb multi-channel sound from my SACD and DVD-A disks while I drive. If there was a multi-channel storage alternative I would give that a try as well, (but there currently is no such alternative).

This is what I like to have in my cars but I only have standard single CD player in my S2000 and Volvo V70, 6-disc CD changer in my E430. None has advanced blue-tooth, USB ... and I don't think I will rush to install Head Unit with these capabilities.

 

[Quest]

I miss my Nak car cassette deck right at this moment...

Back in those days, I have Sony/Alpine cassette units that runs off of amorphorus heads, Dolby-C noise reduction, etc. not vibration resistant (sound changes when hitting bumps), but nevertheless: that was the time where in-car CeeDee players were still out of reach(for me) and these decks were the best I could afford.

I think I still have my burned out Sony head units somewhere as a souvenoir, but dunno where it is now.

And yes, my fit comes with a Honda OE CD unit (made by Alpine Jpn) and it sounds mighty good to my ears...

Q.

 

[hattaresguy]

I haven't listened to CD's in a decade and none of my friends do, all my music is on my Iphone.

I bet most cars just come with CD players and they are never used.

 

[oldmaninsc]

Originally Posted By: hattaresguy


I bet most cars just come with CD players and they are never used.

Not in my cars. Granted I'm an old man, but I still prefer cd to Mp3s. My college age daughters are a different story and use the bluetooth or aux input (depending on vehicle setup) to play their distorted low quality noise - I mean Mp3s LOL!

 

[HangFire]

Streaming is the new big expansion market for the simple reason, most people are too lazy to maintain their own music library. As new services come along they always offer to "import" your existing ripped library into their Cloud for online streaming, then discard all tags, album art and meta data for your pleasure. You can buy an App to bring them back, but the App does tags their way, with their album covers, not yours. Then you get to pay cell plan data charges to stream music that you already own.

To give you an idea how lazy people are, I bought a Kenwood Excelon A/V head unit with USB thumb drive support and asked on forums what encodings and codecs it supported, and what video conversions codecs and parameters actually worked. No one had a clue. I sorted it out on my own.

Then I replaced that piece of junk with a beautifully functional Jensen Nav A/V for 1/3 the money, that has a built-in SD card slot for media. I asked what encoding rates and codecs worked best for it and no one had a clue. So I worked it out on my own again.

The chatter on the car audio forums was about buying vintage iPod Classic's because it's the easiest way to bring music and video on the road. People are paying $100 or more for an old HDD iPod Classic that will eventually fail as it is already more than half way through its lifespan.

When my family and I are on the road I spend zero dollars on data plans and bring zero CD's and DVD's with me because there are gigabytes of kid's programs on one SD card in the head unit.

About CD players, I used my primary commuter car's CD for the first time since I bought it 3 years ago. Our family truckster had a 6 CD changer we never used before replacing it with the Nav A/V unit.

I still buy CD's because of the license issues, and I can rip them to any format I please. I don't have to re-buy just because of a new player and cloud service that comes along. I don't make any boasts about quality because the CD encoding rate and format never was able to encompass the most complex music, but it's "good enough".

 

[rationull]

I still listen to a fair bit of music on burned MP3 CDs as well. I'll burn a CD with all the music I have from a particular artist, separated out by albums. This way I can easy access to what I want to listen to, controllable with the car's audio interface and steering wheel controls, and no worries about the CDs getting lost or damaged since they're just CD-Rs.

However, I also use streaming services and music on my phone sometimes, and part of the reason I still use CDs in the car is that the bluetooth audio interface in my Subaru doesn't work very well.

I could see not caring about a CD player if bluetooth audio were as consistent in behavior and easy to control (basically designed in NOT as an afterthought). I'd guess the majority of new stereos should be pretty good in that respect.

 

[TiredTrucker]

My Jeep and Silverado came with CD player. Have never used it. My last semi truck and my current one have CD player, again, never used. For my pickup and my semi, the radio USB port with my iPhone connected and listening to iTunes, podcasts, iHeart radio, or one of several other streaming apps does it for me. I can't even recall the last time I even picked up a music CD. Had to be when I got all of my CD's ripped over to iTunes.

 

[grumpyoldman]

Originally Posted By: Rhymingmechanic


What FM transmitter are you using? I was looking for awhile, but none of the Amazon reviews gave me much confidence. It would be nice to use the iPod in my truck without messing with a cassette adapter.


I bought a couple "iRock" ones from ebay years ago for $5 each. They SUCKED, but I replaced all the 1000 gauge wires with beefier ones and lengthened the antenna from about 4" to 18". Now it works great. If you can solder (and if I can do it anyone can) it's a good cheap solution.