Car CD Players no more? how are you coping?

QuadraphonicQuad

Help Support QuadraphonicQuad:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

jwckauman

Member
Joined
Mar 1, 2020
Messages
25
Location
Raleigh, NC
I'm a decade-long, proud owner of my favorite car ever, the 2011 TSX with technology package. I LOVE this car, especially now that I have a renewed interest in physical media. I've been buying remastered versions of old albums and other limited edition releases and love the whole experience of having the nice booklets and liner notes, while popping the disc in the car and getting that great audio sound.

As I've mentioned recently, my daughter is of driving age and it would help me to have her drive herself around. So I need another car. I thought I would treat myself to a new Acura with the premium sound system (ELS 3D of course) and have been thinking about either the TLX, RDX or maybe even the MDX. But last night as I was listening to a CD I just purchase of Al Stewart's Year of the Cat (Cherry Red Records), it occurred to me that a new car might not have a CD player. A few searches online led me to that realization that a new Acura is not going to have a CD player. Is that right? Is there ANY option that gets a CD player into a 2022 TLX, RDX and/or MDX? Or am I going to have to figure out a system for ripping these things that gets them into my car quickly. I dont even have a good CD player in a computer right now. My old computer died and I just use a Surface tablet for internet/comptuer stuff.

Did anyone else get really bummed about losing a disc player when you bought your next car? how did you cope with it? or was it not a big deal?
 
I'm a decade-long, proud owner of my favorite car ever, the 2011 TSX with technology package. I LOVE this car, especially now that I have a renewed interest in physical media. I've been buying remastered versions of old albums and other limited edition releases and love the whole experience of having the nice booklets and liner notes, while popping the disc in the car and getting that great audio sound.

As I've mentioned recently, my daughter is of driving age and it would help me to have her drive herself around. So I need another car. I thought I would treat myself to a new Acura with the premium sound system (ELS 3D of course) and have been thinking about either the TLX, RDX or maybe even the MDX. But last night as I was listening to a CD I just purchase of Al Stewart's Year of the Cat (Cherry Red Records), it occurred to me that a new car might not have a CD player. A few searches online led me to that realization that a new Acura is not going to have a CD player. Is that right? Is there ANY option that gets a CD player into a 2022 TLX, RDX and/or MDX? Or am I going to have to figure out a system for ripping these things that gets them into my car quickly. I dont even have a good CD player in a computer right now. My old computer died and I just use a Surface tablet for internet/comptuer stuff.

Did anyone else get really bummed about losing a disc player when you bought your next car? how did you cope with it? or was it not a big deal?
I haven't really missed not having a CD player in my car. I put lots of FLAC files onto a thumb drive and don't miss having to change discs if I want to play a different album. However, if I buy any cds locally, I can't play them in the car on the way home.
 
I haven't really missed not having a CD player in my car. I put lots of FLAC files onto a thumb drive and don't miss having to change discs if I want to play a different album. However, if I buy any cds locally, I can't play them in the car on the way home.

A note of caution: I had burned my CD's as ALACs for playback on my home system at the higher resolution afforded by that codec. However, when trying to play them from a USB stick in my car, the system correctly recognized that the files were there but would not play them. It will only play MP3 and AAC (and perhaps another compressed codec.) I had to convert all of my ALACs to ACC. It was not a difficult process, but I had over 1000 files to convert.

Perhaps I need to take out the guts of an Oppo and install them in my car audio system. ;)

[Edit: The car is the TOTL of that particular model with the JBL Premium Audio system. The only thing "premium" about that system is the price.]
 
I'm a decade-long, proud owner of my favorite car ever, the 2011 TSX with technology package. I LOVE this car, especially now that I have a renewed interest in physical media. I've been buying remastered versions of old albums and other limited edition releases and love the whole experience of having the nice booklets and liner notes, while popping the disc in the car and getting that great audio sound.

As I've mentioned recently, my daughter is of driving age and it would help me to have her drive herself around. So I need another car. I thought I would treat myself to a new Acura with the premium sound system (ELS 3D of course) and have been thinking about either the TLX, RDX or maybe even the MDX. But last night as I was listening to a CD I just purchase of Al Stewart's Year of the Cat (Cherry Red Records), it occurred to me that a new car might not have a CD player. A few searches online led me to that realization that a new Acura is not going to have a CD player. Is that right? Is there ANY option that gets a CD player into a 2022 TLX, RDX and/or MDX? Or am I going to have to figure out a system for ripping these things that gets them into my car quickly. I dont even have a good CD player in a computer right now. My old computer died and I just use a Surface tablet for internet/comptuer stuff.

Did anyone else get really bummed about losing a disc player when you bought your next car? how did you cope with it? or was it not a big deal?
Sad that the trend is away from physical media. My vehicles all have CD players in them. They also have Bluetooth, I personally dislike streaming audio from a phone but that's what a lot of people seem to be doing. As for CD's I don't like to keep original copies in the car as they become trashed very quickly. It's best to make copies or compilation CD's for car use. Throw them away when they become damaged and make new ones. You really do need a computer with a CD, DVD or preferably a Blu-ray drive in it!

One vehicle has a USB connector so you can drop some music on a USB stick, but sadly mine only works with lossy formats MP3 and WMA. The other option is if the deck has an external input jack then you can patch in handheld device.

One unit will play DVDs as well. I used to use a program to make audio DVD's, I think it was called Audio DVD creator. You could dump many, many CD's onto just one DVD disc. There are still many downloads for that program although the software company is now defunct. I'm still looking for my original copy of the software with the registration code, but I don't think that it will still function. Some downloads also include a "crack", which is just a registration code but likely because the original site is no longer there that code does not work. Roxio seems to have an option of doing something similar but it seems much more difficult to use. The audio DVD won't play in the vehicle either without the parking wire hooked up. That prevents you from watching a movie while driving, it would have to be bypassed to permit the audio DVD to play while driving.
 
I made a point of ensuring that the car we bought in 2017 had a cd player but it's hardly used as we have sirius. I used to spend considerable time and money upgrading my car audio system. No more.
 
A long time ago I started ripping my library to ACC apple lossless instead of FLAC and that saves space, plus it's a widely accepted format. For the car I have an old iPod that lives in the glove compartment which gives me access to my entire library. It's virtually the same as having all of YOUR physical media, easily accessible in one spot. In the car, I can't imagine anyone being able to discern the difference between ACC, which is not supposed to be lossy, and a physical CD. Yeah it's a pain to rip all of those discs, but IMHO it's worth it in the end.
 
My library consists of a lot of rips from different disc sources. I rip to FLAC. I use the Samsung 1TB SSD LIKE THIS. I play via the USB port in both my 2017 Ford Escape and 2021 Dodge Challenger.
I prefer this way of playing music in the car way better than the physical discs.
My experience is as long as it is ripped FLAC whether it was a CD, Blu Ray, DVD, digital download, the car systems will play them all. If ripped a SACD to either a DSF or DSD file, they will not play, only FLAC.
Unless you purchase one of the Acura's, surround sound in a car is complicated and expensive, needed a DSP, REW software to tune, etc.
I absolutely love listening to music in the car compared to listening at home, but both ways are good.
I eventually plan on upgrading the original Alpine system in the Challenger, but my goal is just an improved after market stereo.
 
I bought a new truck back in 17 and didn't even think there was a cd player until one day I noticed the eject button and then looked closer to see the disc slot. My phone has a 256GB memory card and my entire collection of cd's is on it in either mp3 or flac and I just use bluetooth to play it through the truck sound system. It's so much easier than dealing with discs. I still have never used the cd player.

K
 
I have been without one for a while, and every now and then, when I get the urge to listen to something I have on CD that I haven't thought of for a while, I miss the ability to just drag that CD to the car and play it on a whim.

Having to rip it, format it, tag it, and all - that's fine for staples that you might want to live in your car with you, but when you want to hear that oddball disc that you have stashed away, it was nice to just be able to grab it and go
 
A note of caution: I had burned my CD's as ALACs for playback on my home system at the higher resolution afforded by that codec. However, when trying to play them from a USB stick in my car, the system correctly recognized that the files were there but would not play them. It will only play MP3 and AAC (and perhaps another compressed codec.) I had to convert all of my ALACs to ACC. It was not a difficult process, but I had over 1000 files to convert.

Perhaps I need to take out the guts of an Oppo and install them in my car audio system. ;)

[Edit: The car is the TOTL of that particular model with the JBL Premium Audio system. The only thing "premium" about that system is the price.]
I got caught with some 96/24 FLACS I had ripped from blu-ray. The car's player would only accept FLACs at maximum of 48/24.
 
My latest car is the first one without a CD player but I had already invested in a digital HiRes music player from a company called Hiby which will take any music file. It has Bluetooth, WiFi, audio jack out. Doesn't come with any built in storage, you have to use a Micro SD card to store the music. The sound is excellent and much better than my ipod classic. To be honest I haven't missed the CD player, to be able make play lists or just set it to shuffle plays suits me fine.
8db072ea91d0d7c82433f54eaf52cf13_original.png
 
I missed not having a CD player at first. That was about 5 years ago. But I've adapted. I'm glad the current Jeep does FLAC. That wasn't the case a few years ago, and they still don't do gapless. It has advantages, like not filling the glove compartment with CDs. Nobody sells new CDs anymore around here, so its not like I can miss buying a new one and playing it on the way home. I do miss not being able to grab a certain one from my collection as I head out the door on my way to a concert.
 
One unit will play DVDs as well. I used to use a program to make audio DVD's, I think it was called Audio DVD creator. You could dump many, many CD's onto just one DVD disc. There are still many downloads for that program although the software company is now defunct. I'm still looking for my original copy of the software with the registration code, but I don't think that it will still function. Some downloads also include a "crack", which is just a registration code but likely because the original site is no longer there that code does not work. Roxio seems to have an option of doing something similar but it seems much more difficult to use. The audio DVD won't play in the vehicle either without the parking wire hooked up. That prevents you from watching a movie while driving, it would have to be bypassed to permit the audio DVD to play while driving.
I don't mean to hijack this thread but it got me thinking about making Audio DVD discs for the car again.

I checked out Roxio and successfully burned a disc with many CD albums on it. I test played some of it and thought that this doesn't sound that great, I said "I bet the program is converting the files to MP3"! I opened the disc using DVD Audio Extractor and sure enough the tracks are lossy encoded as Dolby AC3! So for me that program is useless.

I searched for another program and found Music DVD Creator. I downloaded it but can't do much without purchasing a license. It does have options for PCM sample rates of 48Khz or 96Khz. The unregistered version was very limited and wouldn't even allow me to burn a copy to try! I was going to purchase a licence anyway but got hung up in the payment process. They even sent me an email asking why I hadn't completed the checkout. The link they provided still does not work.

I went back to look at Audio DVD Creator. As I mentioned previously their site is dead so you can not purchase it. I tried the serial number "hack" posted and this time it worked. The drawback of this software is it will not work with hi-rez files only 16 bit 44.1Khz or 16bit 48Khz (It up samples CD's to 48Khz). You can use AC3 for coding as well if you want to make very long DVD's.
 
no aftermarket decks available?
Not for modern vehicles. The entertainment system is just one of the functions handled by the dashboard touch screen that is present in virtually every new vehicle. I know mine controls climate control, navigation, phone pairing, cameras and a bunch more. There is no aftermarket equivalent.
 
My new Audi A5 has USB ports only, so no random grab a CD and play it, not even hidden SDCard slots like the last one, which are both options I miss. Its backwards to the old days of copy to tape, but now its rip to USB/SD/SSD, the USB sockets are in the console between the seats, so visible and breakable. Audi think everybody just connects via Bluetooth to their Phone, but the B&O audio system option I got plays surround flacs. I will say that although it was an expensive addition its difficult to tell mp3 from flac on it!
 
Back
Top