Maggie's Farm

We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

Our Recent Essays Behind the Front Page

Much Sorry with Delays
Birth, Death and All That Stuff in Between
How to Honor Labor Day, Every Day
My Yom Kippur Miracle (Repost from 2010)
Good intro to fly casting
Peach update, with pie
NYC update
Easy for you to say: To the elites on mass immigration
For NYC on 9/11, Sailors' Snug Harbor
Pickled Peaches
Water Shoes
Labor Costs in U.S.
Your "identity"
Good news about The Great Courses
Uses of Hot Pepper Jelly/Sauce, Chutneys, and Jams
A Saturday Drive to Litchfield County, CT
How to Pick a Kayak
Civilized: Fruit forks and knives
Loads of kayaking on Cape Cod
Psychology Experiments' Questionable Results

Categories


All categories

Quicksearch

Links

Blog Administration

Open login screen

RSS Readers

Add to Google

Subscribe with Bloglines

Sunday, December 26. 2021

Why don't recent cars have CD players?

Are CDs obsolete? Are books obsolete?


I use both. I also have a turntable for old vinyl records.  


Posted by The Barrister in The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation at 13:41 | Comments (17) | Trackbacks (0)

Trackbacks
Trackback specific URI for this entry

No Trackbacks

Comments
Display comments as (Linear | Threaded)

I have a 2021 Subaru and it has a CD player which I use a lot. However, most of the cars I looked at last year, when I was car shopping, did not have one. Not having a CD player was never a deal-breaker, but having one definitely went into the positive column.
#1 Roy on 2021-12-26 14:04 (Reply)
CDs are obsolete.

You can move more music to your phone or a tablet on a micro-sd card than you can carry in a suitcase of CDs and you can make (legally) multiple copies for backup purposes (or just to use elsewhere).

There are security issues with syncing your phone to a rental car, but that is what it is.
#2 William O. B'Livion on 2021-12-26 14:18 (Reply)
save the music to a USB chip. most new car stereos have a usb port and the only problem I have is losing the dang chip. 700 songs on a 32GB chip
#3 Charley Hua Chu on 2021-12-26 14:34 (Reply)
yep, and/or they have bluetooth to directly interface with your smartphone and play the music stored on there.
#3.1 JTW on 2021-12-27 04:04 (Reply)
We've become so spoiled for choice in the options for media platforms the discussion of sound fidelity has completely gone. I wonder why this is? I guess because conventional storage modes have jammed the quality/fidelity of virtually all music into the upper quality percentiles. We just don't have low-quality sound being the norm any more, except maybe on AM radio. But I remember high-end vinyl systems, with old vacuum tube-style pre-amps and high-dollar speakers belting out amazingly rich sound quality. Is this nostalgia talking? Or have we lost the idea of audiophiles in the last generation? Or is it because more modern forms of music are less musical, and more about lyrics and bass-line? dunno.
#4 Aggie on 2021-12-26 14:49 (Reply)
Or, you have become a geezer like me and much of the fine nuances of high-fidelity sound can't be heard anymore.
#4.1 The Neon Madman on 2021-12-26 23:41 (Reply)
I have a classical LP of the Beethoven Violin Concerto from 1963 in which the authentic reproduction of sound is astounding. I know because I heard the same man perform the same concerto and I did not believe this level of quality in reproduction was possible. There was no difference between live and the reproduction.
#4.1.1 james wilson (Link) on 2021-12-28 15:50 (Reply)
We are talking about car stereos here.

No matter how good the speakers, the amplifier, etc., you're in an otherwise noisy environment that cannot be safely silenced.
#4.2 William O. B'Livion on 2021-12-27 18:55 (Reply)
They tell me that CDs are obsolete (DVDs too).

However, I was in Big Lots before Christmas, and they sell brand new turntables for playing vinyl records. They look like the little portable HiFi's of the 1960s. They also had a selection of vinyl records, new production, for about $25 each. I noticed it because the one facing me was Creedence Clearwater Revival's hits.
#5 Tina on 2021-12-26 14:52 (Reply)
I'm sure that makes sense in someone's world. Regression to one of the most primitive sound reproduction systems ever developed. Great early 20th century technology but between damaged vinyl (scratches, warps), broken needles, swing arms, turntables and the need for a very physically stable platform to mount the turntable, why would you every want to go back? Why not regress one step further and get a wind-up Victrola with a sound horn? And $25 for a piece of vinyl with one album?

I have literally thousands of songs on a thumb drive and most of them in my iPhone which I can connect to any sound system by Bluetooth. This is nothing special. Just about everyone in the civilized world has the same ability.

To me this is the equivalent of buying a Smith-Corona* for correspondence.

*For those readers under 50, that is a typewriter, an ancient, manual word processor.
#5.1 Galway Boy on 2021-12-27 09:27 (Reply)
The reason for the resurgence in vinyl recordings is that the sound quality is superior to the digital mediums. Good old analog doesn't rely on analog to digital algorithms or digital to analog algorithms nor does it have compression artifacts to reduce the fidelity of the audio. Naturally the quality begins to decrease as wear from use begins to add up from contact with the stylus.
#5.1.1 FeralFerret on 2021-12-27 20:04 (Reply)
I liked the 8 track. It's advantage was that you always had a choice between four songs on the cassette. You got so accustomed to what was on it and when to change to avoid a crappy song that it was done without having to think about it.

Now I use thumb drives and since I put the music on it I like all the songs.
#6 OneGuy on 2021-12-26 18:06 (Reply)
Vinyl is hipster. Has been for years. 78s are not considered a step better, nor are 45s, though those have a following among the jukebox owners. Album sales of 33 1/3s remain hot in some subcultures.

45s are a lot of work to play, you may remember. Those insertable spindles didn't work all that well. LPs were better.
#7 Assistant Village Idiot on 2021-12-26 18:13 (Reply)
Maybe Tower Records will make a comeback
#8 Jon from Illinois on 2021-12-26 20:21 (Reply)
My kids were particularly excited by the vinyl records this Christmas, but they're also fascinated by the CDs and cassette tapes. Finding more tapes is on the agenda.
#9 itsatax on 2021-12-26 22:20 (Reply)
CDs are not technically obsolete, but that's not where the market is these days. Granted, if you use music as wallpaper and are satisfied with compressed versions of overproduced material, MP3s or whatever are fine. Since CDs use linear PCM there is no "information" (quality) loss in the recording (in principle). This is important for classical music listeners like myself.

I'll be buying a new vehicle in the next year or two and I'll have an aftermarket CD player put in it if I can't get one from the car manufacturer.
#10 Hairless Joe on 2021-12-27 09:03 (Reply)
One reason I decided on my 2018 Nissan Frontier over the other pickups I looked at was that it had a CD player. My wife and I listen to Great Courses on CD during road trips, so it is used.

I still have all my vinyl and CDs at home and play them on my audio system. And the sound is much better than the iPhone/mp3/Bluetooth music that most listen to. I used to rip my CDs to my computer using mp3, but switched to the Apple lossless format. The difference in sound quality is easily noticeable to me, even on my PC sound system. iPhone/mp3/Bluetooth music is good enough for most people, and that is just fine with me. whatever floats your boat.
#11 Pod Hamp on 2021-12-27 14:16 (Reply)

Add Comment
(Your e-mail will not show in your comment)

By commenting on this site you agree to the site rules listed here. Email
addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for email notifications.

Quick reference guide: [i] italics [/i], [b] bold [/b], [u] underline [/u],
[url] (web address) [/url]. More tips here.

Enclosing asterisks marks text as bold (*word*), underscore are made via _word_.
E-Mail addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for E-Mail notifications.

To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly.
CAPTCHA

BBCode format allowed
 
 
A Chris Southern Consulting website.