Who still plays CDs in their car?
- Thread starter krichardson
- Start date
One of my old trucks had an AM only radio with three presets, FM was never an option so my current truck that has 4 FM presets and a cassette drive (that I have no clue if it works) seems like it has a great system
Hello; Interesting comments on this thread.
The first cars I drove had only AM radios and home record players only had one speaker.
Some years later FM and stereo vinyl records were the top things. Vinyl stereo recordings were quite nice and did have a full rich sound with the better stylus. Care had to be taken in handling the vinyl and special cleaning materials and procedures were needed as the vinyl would attract dust.
The cassette tapes eventually became decent when Dolby systems were developed and better quality tape was used. The first tapes were little more than sticky tape and fine rust. I copied a lot of vinyl LP's onto cassette tapes. The best tapes still had some noise issues and would fail over time due to wear and stray magnetic degradation.
Some of the first commercial CD's did have some sound quality and balance issues. These issues were soon pretty much fixed as the engineers and programmers learned about the medium. For a time I would copy vinyl onto cassette tapes to play in vehicles as the first CD players for autos had serious skipping issues when bumps were hit while driving. I now have CD players in my car and truck and still listen to them often. A few years ago I had something over 700 CD's and have since added more. I have for years burned a copy of my factory/commercial CD's onto CD blanks to play in a vehicle. This way the original CD stays home and in good condition and the copy is carried about to listen to while driving. So far the CD’s have held up well over time, much better than tapes which could develop issues from simply sitting around. As long as care is taken to avoid scratches the CD format may have the longest shelf life of the formats I have tried so far.
I have been around the newer cars with inputs for the newer audio equipment. My understanding has been that some fidelity is lost in the newer devices that can crowd a lot of music into the small memory cards and such.
I suspect that I will move to the new formats at some point. I usually have waited until a format has matured enough to have a good sound quality.
I have some friends that still have hundreds to thousands of vinyl LP's.
The first cars I drove had only AM radios and home record players only had one speaker.
Some years later FM and stereo vinyl records were the top things. Vinyl stereo recordings were quite nice and did have a full rich sound with the better stylus. Care had to be taken in handling the vinyl and special cleaning materials and procedures were needed as the vinyl would attract dust.
The cassette tapes eventually became decent when Dolby systems were developed and better quality tape was used. The first tapes were little more than sticky tape and fine rust. I copied a lot of vinyl LP's onto cassette tapes. The best tapes still had some noise issues and would fail over time due to wear and stray magnetic degradation.
Some of the first commercial CD's did have some sound quality and balance issues. These issues were soon pretty much fixed as the engineers and programmers learned about the medium. For a time I would copy vinyl onto cassette tapes to play in vehicles as the first CD players for autos had serious skipping issues when bumps were hit while driving. I now have CD players in my car and truck and still listen to them often. A few years ago I had something over 700 CD's and have since added more. I have for years burned a copy of my factory/commercial CD's onto CD blanks to play in a vehicle. This way the original CD stays home and in good condition and the copy is carried about to listen to while driving. So far the CD’s have held up well over time, much better than tapes which could develop issues from simply sitting around. As long as care is taken to avoid scratches the CD format may have the longest shelf life of the formats I have tried so far.
I have been around the newer cars with inputs for the newer audio equipment. My understanding has been that some fidelity is lost in the newer devices that can crowd a lot of music into the small memory cards and such.
I suspect that I will move to the new formats at some point. I usually have waited until a format has matured enough to have a good sound quality.
I have some friends that still have hundreds to thousands of vinyl LP's.
I still buy CD's all the time, although I rip them and put them onto my phone for listening in the car (USB port) and put the cds away in a drawer. I'm glad not to be lugging around cds for the car anymore though.
No telling how many computers I go through over the years, or how many files I've lost for various reasons.
With a cd you have no DRM issues and you'll own the music forever. You can rip it to the latest standards.
screw the file purchasing only - if I buy something I want to own it without restriction, and the best way for that is a physical cd.
No telling how many computers I go through over the years, or how many files I've lost for various reasons.
With a cd you have no DRM issues and you'll own the music forever. You can rip it to the latest standards.
screw the file purchasing only - if I buy something I want to own it without restriction, and the best way for that is a physical cd.
