Audiophile, Budgetphile, and Dontgiveaphile thread.

[Ziggy]

Most of my CDs are Red Book.

[isiolia]

I still buy most of my music that way too. I just tend to rip them to MP3 and FLAC off the bat and store the disc.

The only minor concern to me is quality, which far as I know can be most easily worked around by using an iPod or something (for ALAC). Still, high bitrate MP3s sound fine. Otherwise, it'd be a very, very niche market due to digital music just being very convenient. Even folks like my parents switched over to using that without fuss.

[samsonlonghair]

So WTF, new cars don't come with CD players!

Dude, some new cars don't even come with RADIOS!

New car stereos can take control of Android and Apple phones, and you can control them using the console screen. So I was thinking, it would be awesome if someone made an Android based USB audio CD player for cars. You could control it using the console screen, and be able to read track text data, control mp3 discs, and all the amenities of a modern CD player. Does anything like this already exist? If not, here's hoping that someone will come out with such a product. Surely there's some company somewhere that realizes they can corner the market for all the people that still use CDs in 2017.

That's actually a really interesting question. I checked Google. There are a few systems that have CD players and have android head units, but it's not explicitly clear if android is directly controlling the CD player, or if it's just an android tablet slapped no top of a cheap CD/DVD player with independent hardware buttons for the CD/DVD player.. So I started to wonder if Android is even capable of playing CDs. I found an interesting proof-of-concept video here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bxod4pIusro
Based on that video, it seems that android can only connect to an optical drive if you install a paid app. Even then, the youtuber only uses the CD-R to open .jpg files, .mp3 files, and .mp4 files (in other words, only file types that android can open natively) not redbook audio.

To answer your question directly, no, nothing quite like that already exists.

I guess YOU could corner the market if you believe that such a market exists. Nothing about your idea is impossible. You just need a stock android device, a stock CD player, and three pieces of custom software. You would need a (1) driver to tell android how to control the CD player hardware, and you would need (2) software to playback Redbook CD Digital Audio. You should also include (3) software that downloads track lists from cddb and album art from amazon. Then you're set.

[marurun]

Don't most of these systems have some kind of AUX input for a 1/8" stereo cable? You could do what we did way back in the day: buy a portable CD player with an auto power adapter and connect the output to the AUX input. Then you just control the portable CD player and the audio comes out of the car speakers.

Additionally, if you have any laptop or desktop in your house with a CD drive, use a program like Exact Audio Copy (free) to rip and label the tracks. EAC can also convert those files to MP3, though you may have to follow instructions to install the latest LAME (mp3 encoder software) and tell EAC where to find it.

[isiolia]

Many/most have aux input as well, but the caveat was that he mentioned controlling it with the built in head unit. That's more of a priority than ever, since the infotainment systems in many/most new cars are tied into the onboard computers and are not readily swapped out.

[marurun]

I'm just not sure that's going to happen, ever. No demand. I have a CD player in my car. I have owned the car for a little over 2 years. I have never once put a CD in it. In fact, I only ever reveal the CD slot because it's fun to watch the screen slide back.

It's possible, however, that those newer head units might support a CD changer, though. But they use custom controls to operate them if they do.

I guess, basically, since Android is open source, you could develop a generic CD driver and basic controls and just use them to read inputs from an Android or Apple Play external unit.

[Ziggy]

I'm not such an audio snob that I wouldn't be able to roll with 320kbps mp3s in the car. Although I do have 1:1 copies (ie: uncompressed) of CDs I keep in the car, I also have a few mp3 CDs that I'm fine with. So what's the difference between using mp3 from a CD or a phone? Well, honestly, I resent having to use an additional device (the phone) to listen to music. I wanna use the stereo in the car and nothing extra. Now I know you can control the phone from the in-dash system (I do use this from time to time) but I still find it to be annoying. I'm also used to having amazing battery life because I don't use my phone for EVERYTHING like most people do. I don't EVER have to worry about charging my phone during the day. I don't wanna have to worry about charging my phone.

Now let's say I transition myself to using my phone in place of CDs in the car. What the fuck am I supposed to do about track gaps?

So occasionally I'll listen to an mp3 CD, or some mix of some sort. But most of the time, unless I'm listening to the radio, I'm playing a full album from start to finish (I have a long-ish commute). When I make 1:1 copies of CDs to keep in my car, it retains the gaps. It really fucking sucks when you're listening through an album and one song is supposed to flow right into the next, but because it's mp3 it appears that the music pauses for a few seconds. Unless I rip the entire album as one long track (which means I couldn't skip between songs if I wanted to) how am I supposed to retain track gap from my phone?

[isiolia]

Systems that can integrate with phones like that do tend to do so for more than music, and many newer vehicles build in conveniences for phones like USB ports for charging. So, it can make sense, to a point, that if you're already using Carplay for hands-free and navigation, that it also be your source of music. Even moreso if you've got it all set up as a music source in general, which many people do.

That said, personally, my commute/etc is short, and I don't use my phone for music either...so I stick with SD cards.

Gapless playback is more a consideration of the playback software...which, admittedly, is often less flexible than would be ideal (insert Uconnect rant here). Might be something you can tag the tracks with (iTunes had a box to check at one point) or an option to toggle. I agree, it can be annoying, but it's not something that MP3 can't do too.

[Anapan]

I've been asking my patrons to mix my favorite songs in 5.1. No takers yet. I always want my downloads in FLAC and I put their mixes of MP3 on my less-capable devices. I can actually hear cymbals being bitcrushed all the time in music I like; Sadly, I found from my audio engineer friends, that's because their samples are shit. Put shit in, and your mix is shit. Above all I wish that artists didn't rely on sampled and downloaded patches for their high end.

Take it with a grain of salt - it's clickbaity and flawed, but this guy isn't lying:
https://youtu.be/oVME_l4IwII

[isiolia]

Maybe more will embrace Atmos or other spacial setups (it's started...barely ), but yeah, fairly few even seem to try. Relatively speaking, fairly few people are probably making a point to listen to music with a 5.1 setup.