Portable CD players with USBs to connect to new cars without CD players

[Stompin at the Savoy]

1 hour ago, bresna said:

How do you get your music onto your iPhone? I only recently got an iPhone and I am not going to install any special Apple music player app just to get my music onto this phone. I used to use Sharepod to get my mp3 files onto my iPod, but that only works up to the iPhone 11.

Well there are other ways to put music onto an iphone but why not use iTunes?  It's free and you are not required to use it to play music: you can just use it to rip cds and put them onto the iphone and use something else (or nothing) to play them on your pc.  IPhones come with a built in player application which works seamlessly with iTunes but I believe you can use other applications on the phone to play music if you want.  But why would you?  It's simple and easy to use the existing software and there are few downsides.

[JSngry]

Apple is the devil.

The devil comes in many forms, but Apple is one of them.

Beware, brother, beware! 

[Ken Dryden]

20 hours ago, Dan Gould said:

I am so not looking forward to any new car, if I could afford one.

And I say that even though I have adopted to a certain extent the use of a thumb drive in my 2014 Kia. It works for d/ls that I occasionally purchase and recordings from the Smithsonian that are still only a hard drive - I convert to MP3 for car listening on longer trips.  

But with the number of CDs purchased and in the stacks .. it will suck not to have a simple way to play in the car

Much as I detest the lack of the cd player is a pain, I do enjoy the safety features, which I've never had in a car that I've owned and driven (my wife got the last 2021 new car purchase). I figured that at my age, they will be of help, particularly with the number of idiots who run lights, change lanes mid-interseaction and various other stunts.

[Dan Gould]

21 minutes ago, Ken Dryden said:

Much as I detest the lack of the cd player is a pain, I do enjoy the safety features, which I've never had in a car that I've owned and driven (my wife got the last 2021 new car purchase). I figured that at my age, they will be of help, particularly with the number of idiots who run lights, change lanes mid-interseaction and various other stunts.

I don't think I would ever rely on a car's "safety" features beyond airbag and seatbelt. Safe following distance and constant attention to mirrors are my safety tools.

[Kevin Bresnahan]

6 hours ago, Stompin at the Savoy said:

Well there are other ways to put music onto an iphone but why not use iTunes?  It's free and you are not required to use it to play music: you can just use it to rip cds and put them onto the iphone and use something else (or nothing) to play them on your pc.  IPhones come with a built in player application which works seamlessly with iTunes but I believe you can use other applications on the phone to play music if you want.  But why would you?  It's simple and easy to use the existing software and there are few downsides.

I can't tell if you're kidding or not but no, I am not going to install iTunes on my Windows PC. It's a sucky app and it takes over as your default player for everything. I don't want that Apple app anywhere near my music.

The thing that bugs me the most is that all I want is my music onto my phone. I don't need anything else Apple "thinks" I need done. I don't need it sync'ed to their money-making cloud. I don't need to be prompted to buy anything from their store. But Apple decided that just letting me mount my phone as an external drive was not in their best interest, so they made it impossible to do. SharePod did just that, but Apple figured out how to block it on iPhones after the iPhone 11. I have an iPhone 14. I only got this phone because my daughters want to FacteTime me, otherwise I'd still have a Samsung Galaxy.

FWIW, I use Exact Audio Copy to rip my CDs. I have for many many years. It's the best ripper ever made, especially if you like to tinker with the settings like I do.

4 hours ago, Dan Gould said:

I don't think I would ever rely on a car's "safety" features beyond airbag and seatbelt. Safe following distance and constant attention to mirrors are my safety tools.

Some of the reverse sensors are really nice to have. I didn't realize how useful they were until I had to drive a car that didn't have them. They can save you from many parking lot idiots who fly around like they're on a highway.

Edited December 22, 2023 by bresna

[Stompin at the Savoy]

59 minutes ago, bresna said:

I can't tell if you're kidding or not but no, I am not going to install iTunes on my Windows PC. It's a sucky app and it takes over as your default player for everything. I don't want that Apple app anywhere near my music.

 

You can install iTunes and still use another app as the default to play music.  Go to Control Panel/Apps/Default Apps and set the program you want for music.  That simple. 

You can also use your preferred program to rip cds and then import the resulting files into iTunes in order to put them on the device.

Complain all you want about Apple's proprietary attitudes.  I agree!  Nevertheless, both you and I bought iphones and the easiest way to get music on them is to use itunes.  Let me know if you come up with a better way!

Edited December 22, 2023 by Stompin at the Savoy

[Stompin at the Savoy]

1 hour ago, Dan Gould said:

I don't think I would ever rely on a car's "safety" features beyond airbag and seatbelt. Safe following distance and constant attention to mirrors are my safety tools.

My car has a lane sensing program which you can turn on or off.  It gives a beep and a slight sensation on the wheel when you wander out of your lane.  I generally keep it engaged.  Pretty good feature.  I also like the camera image shown on the dash when you reverse.  The system can read speed limit signs and shows the speed limit on the speedometer, which is good.

Edited December 22, 2023 by Stompin at the Savoy

[jazzbo]

Like Dan I wouldn't RELY on the car's safety/warning features, but they can be very helpful.

[medjuck]

2 hours ago, jazzbo said:

Like Dan I wouldn't RELY on the car's safety/warning features, but they can be very helpful.

I use mine when I'm changing radio stations or (especially) cds. 

[Stompin at the Savoy]

One pgm you can use to move music files to an iphone is Music Monkey.  I didn't think it could do it but I upgraded to the current free version just now and was able to do it. 

I wonder if you can really operate an iphone effectively without itunes?  How do you backup the phone to your pc?  I doubt that anything but itunes is going to do that reliably...  If you don't have a backup you may have trouble down the line.

Edited December 22, 2023 by Stompin at the Savoy

[Ken Dryden]

5 hours ago, jazzbo said:

Like Dan I wouldn't RELY on the car's safety/warning features, but they can be very helpful.

When you have been driving as long as I have, you will still look back before backing up, etc. The safety features are a bonus, not a substitute for driving cautiously.

[JSngry]

"intuitive"= what your personal muscle memory clicks with. I would totally have to reprogram my conscious and unconscious minds to work in an Apple environment.

I learned this for the few years that my wife had an iPhone. "Exasperating"  is putting it mildly! 

I learned about computers on DOS systems. Windows 3.1 had literally just been introduced. So "getting under the hood" still works for me, because it never DIDN'T work for me.

But not everybody's brain is wired that way, and for them, there's Apple, or for those for whom getting even further under the hood is desired (not me!!!), there's Linux.

But Apple's proprietary business models, yes, that is the devil.

What else is the devil is parking your car not knowing if you're going to be surrounded by big ass SUVs (or in Texas, pickups) to where you back out totally at you own risk. 

The time has come to start looking at segregating parking spaces by vehicle height and/or length. Maybe the actuaries can shed some light, maybe? 

[JSngry]

Wow. 

[Stompin at the Savoy]

To get back to the original topic, I would recommend against a portable cd player for the car.  It's going to bounce around and the controls will only really be safely accessible when the car is stopped.  In addition, the capabilities of a cd player are so meager compared to a phone.  For example you plug your phone in and call out "Hey Siri give me directions to 1750 Vine Street Los Angeles, California" and a map comes up on your dashboard showing where your car is,  and spoken directions follow.    You can bring hundreds of albums with you in the car instead of a few cds which you probably cannot control with voice commands-  "Hey Siri, play Classic Don Byas Sessions".  How about "Hey Siri where's the next rest stop?"  Your cd player can't answer that.   The smart phone clearly is the mainline designated replacement for a car stereo.  You'll miss out if you don't get with the program.

[JSngry]

2+ years of an iPhone where left was right, top was bottom, inside was nowhere, and an intuitive for me split-second process took forever to ferret out what I was supposed to be thinking in the first place was enough to convince me that these Apples had no taste in my mouth. 

[Stompin at the Savoy]

2 minutes ago, JSngry said:

2+ years of an iPhone where left was right, top was bottom, inside was nowhere, and an intuitive for me split-second process took forever to ferret out what I was supposed to be thinking in the first place was enough to convince me that these Apples had no taste in my mouth. 

Um, so get an Android phone?

[JSngry]

15 minutes ago, Stompin at the Savoy said:

Um, so get an Android phone?

Um, yeah. Have had one for years now, a decade at least. Only upgrade them when required to keep getting security updates. Phones are not central to my existence, and/so I've never not been able to do anything I've wanted to do.

But I do try to plan trips in advance, get somebody else to look shit up while driving, and limit talking while driving to an absolute minimum, even if it entails being rude.

Not all drivers are so inclined, those assholes. 

 

11 minutes ago, rostasi said:

An example: in 2020, when I had to stay outside of a vet’s office in
the car (because of the pandemic) waiting while they looked at the cat,
they tried to call me on my wife’s Samsung. The fumbling I had to do
(put in a code, swipe this way and that, and so on…) in order to just take
the call was so much that I kept missing the call. In the end, they walked
out of the office and walked to my car to give me the message.

Today: My wife gave me her iPhone just in case the doctor’s office called
to come pick her up. They did. While at a red light, I reached down and 
pressed one button that immediately answered and pressed one button
to shut it off. Again, the idea is to make things simple enough for those
who have seldom (or not at all) used the technology.

LOL. Gonna have to do a LOT better than that, bro! 

Your wife had her phone time out from inactivity and didn't give you the code to reopen it. It's a standard security protocol that she chose to enable and could have chosen to disable. Since she didn't do that, or didn't give you her password, the phone operated exactly the way she had it setup to operate.

Did SHE know how to use her own phone? Did she know where the security settings were or how to adjust them? If not, then Apple is for her too! 

Or maybe she didn't want to complicate things for you!?!?! LOL 🥰

Pretty much any phone, Apple or Android, will have the one-touch ease of answering/hanging up if it's set up to. 

[JSngry]

Dude, no phone is that hard to use unless somebody sets it up like that. No idea what dysfunctionality was going on, but it had to have been on the user end to be THAT  wonked down

 

[Ken Dryden]

The issue remains I like to play new CDs in the car, it knocks out some listening for me. II am always a minimum of 1200-1500 CDs behind in my listening and if driving for an hour or two day can help me get a couple more of them heard, it's great. I  have no desire to be exploring digital options when there is something new that I own that I want to hear.

I previously had a portable CD player with an adaptor that fit the cassette player (which I never used) for our 1992 Camry years ago. I never had any issues and waited until I was stopped to change CDs.

[Coda]

This is a nice one.  It works with USB input, is small and discreet so as not to attract attention in your car.  It only has the one cable, so you don't use an audio cable to attach to your car speakers.  It works when placed both vertically or horizontally.

Amazon.com: External USB CD Player for Car, Homlab Portable Plugs in CD Player with Extra USB Cable, for Car Without CD Player, Laptop, TV, Mac, Computer, for Android 4.4 and Above Navigation, Black : Electronics
 

• User-Friendly Operation: You can enjoy your favorite CDs in car in seconds. Just connect the external CD player to the USB port of your car and insert the CD. The USB CD player will automatically read the disc, and you can easily access the music list through the car's flash drive resource.
• More Compact Size - This portable CD player is the perfect solution for cars without built-in CD players. It is thinner than most car CD player in the market. But features with enhanced chipset at the same time. It has better reading capabilities, anti-skip functionality, compatibility with various formats, noise reduction.
• Additional 1m USB Cable: The car CD player comes with a free 1m USB cable. This allows you to place it anywhere you desire, such as the car center console, dashboard, or glove box. It is more convenient for storage and changing disc.
• Impressive Music Enjoyment: With this USB portable CD player, you can fully immerse yourself in the music or audio books from your collection. Nothing can stop the music coming out from your car stereo. No matter it is placed horizontally or vertically or the car bumps. Please note that the initial reading process may require a bit of patience.
• Wide Compatibility: This car CD player offers wide compatibility with thousands of car models. For specific compatibility information, please refer to the list on below or reach out to our customer support team for assistance. Additionally, you can connect the player to other devices such as computers, laptops, and TVs. Please note that if your car has an Android system, ensure that it is version 4.4 or above. If your car model is not listed, an additional audio conversion box may be required.

[Kevin Bresnahan]

I find the iPhone a hell of a lot harder to operate than my old Samsung Galaxy. It's harder to text. It's harder to call. It's hard to setup. It uses stupid shit like defaulting to HEIC pictures instead of JPEG pictures. Have you ever tried to send someone a picture from your iCloud? They likely cannot open it unless they have an Apple PC. It defaults to AIFF instead of mp3, most likely because they invented a format just because they're Apple & they want to force people to use their player app.

One thing I really hate is that this iPhone has terrible predictive texting capabilities compared to my old Galaxy phones. I'm talking about when you're swiping a text to someone and you mention something like a winery, say Kinsella Vineyard. With the Samasung Galaxy, you type in Kinsella Vineyards one time and any time after that, if you type Ki, the Samsung pops "Kinsella" down at the bottom as an auto-fill option. After you select "Kinsella", it'll then pop up "Vineyard". The iPhone never gives that option. It requires you to type out the entire name Kinsella Vineyard over & over & over. It's very annoying.

And I never had to do anything special to answer any calls on my Galaxy so I don't know what your wife did to her phone to make it act like that. In fact, this iPhone sometimes requires me to point it to my face just to get it to show up in my car for CarPlay. This is actually very annoying as the whole reason I was to use CarPlay is because I don't want to have to look at my phone at all.

1 hour ago, Coda said:

This is a nice one.  It works with USB input, is small and discreet so as not to attract attention in your car.  It only has the one cable, so you don't use an audio cable to attach to your car speakers.  It works when placed both vertically or horizontally.

Amazon.com: External USB CD Player for Car, Homlab Portable Plugs in CD Player with Extra USB Cable, for Car Without CD Player, Laptop, TV, Mac, Computer, for Android 4.4 and Above Navigation, Black : Electronics
 

• User-Friendly Operation: You can enjoy your favorite CDs in car in seconds. Just connect the external CD player to the USB port of your car and insert the CD. The USB CD player will automatically read the disc, and you can easily access the music list through the car's flash drive resource.
• More Compact Size - This portable CD player is the perfect solution for cars without built-in CD players. It is thinner than most car CD player in the market. But features with enhanced chipset at the same time. It has better reading capabilities, anti-skip functionality, compatibility with various formats, noise reduction.
• Additional 1m USB Cable: The car CD player comes with a free 1m USB cable. This allows you to place it anywhere you desire, such as the car center console, dashboard, or glove box. It is more convenient for storage and changing disc.
• Impressive Music Enjoyment: With this USB portable CD player, you can fully immerse yourself in the music or audio books from your collection. Nothing can stop the music coming out from your car stereo. No matter it is placed horizontally or vertically or the car bumps. Please note that the initial reading process may require a bit of patience.
• Wide Compatibility: This car CD player offers wide compatibility with thousands of car models. For specific compatibility information, please refer to the list on below or reach out to our customer support team for assistance. Additionally, you can connect the player to other devices such as computers, laptops, and TVs. Please note that if your car has an Android system, ensure that it is version 4.4 or above. If your car model is not listed, an additional audio conversion box may be required.

That's some bad photoshopping!!

[Daniel A]

4 minutes ago, bresna said:

I find the iPhone a hell of a lot harder to operate than my old Samsung Galaxy. It's harder to text. 

...

One thing I really hate is that this iPhone has terrible predictive texting capabilities compared to my old Galaxy phones. 

I have always had private (Sony) Android phones (never owned an Apple product), though I have had work iPhones for the last seven years. Given iPhone's reputation, I've always been surprised of how much slower it is to text on an iPhone compared to every Android phone I've tried. Me and my (iPhone user) brother did a kind of "competition" where we texted a given message to each other. Android was much faster every time. 🙂

[JSngry]

If a little thing like answering a phone call becomes technologically overwhelming, then yes, Apple is for you. 

Oh, Samsung is just one type of Android phone. There are several. They can all have variations in their bells and whistles (Customization!!! CHOICE!!!) I've been using a Google phone for the last few years and it's very fine, and very simple. I don't really like Google as a company, but their phones are solid. 

"The Great State of Texas"  gave me a free iPad when I got my hearing aids (I had a choice between that and a Razr phone,which I did not want). I thought I was going to figure it out, but jeez, still totally counter-intuitive for me. I can websurf (and most other things) on my phone exponentially faster on my phone, so I gave it to my wife. She likes it well enough, but still uses her phone (Samsung) most of the time. The iPad if mostly for our granddaughter to play a few games on when she comes over. Other than that, it's this black rectangle thing that sits on the coffee table, or .. someplace. 

Then again, she's the type that never closes one window before opening another, so...what are going to do with that? Guaranteed slop no matter what 

 

6 hours ago, Coda said:

This is a nice one.  It works with USB input, is small and discreet so as not to attract attention in your car.  It only has the one cable, so you don't use an audio cable to attach to your car speakers.  It works when placed both vertically or horizontally.

Amazon.com: External USB CD Player for Car, Homlab Portable Plugs in CD Player with Extra USB Cable, for Car Without CD Player, Laptop, TV, Mac, Computer, for Android 4.4 and Above Navigation, Black : Electronics
 

• User-Friendly Operation: You can enjoy your favorite CDs in car in seconds. Just connect the external CD player to the USB port of your car and insert the CD. The USB CD player will automatically read the disc, and you can easily access the music list through the car's flash drive resource.
• More Compact Size - This portable CD player is the perfect solution for cars without built-in CD players. It is thinner than most car CD player in the market. But features with enhanced chipset at the same time. It has better reading capabilities, anti-skip functionality, compatibility with various formats, noise reduction.
• Additional 1m USB Cable: The car CD player comes with a free 1m USB cable. This allows you to place it anywhere you desire, such as the car center console, dashboard, or glove box. It is more convenient for storage and changing disc.
• Impressive Music Enjoyment: With this USB portable CD player, you can fully immerse yourself in the music or audio books from your collection. Nothing can stop the music coming out from your car stereo. No matter it is placed horizontally or vertically or the car bumps. Please note that the initial reading process may require a bit of patience.
• Wide Compatibility: This car CD player offers wide compatibility with thousands of car models. For specific compatibility information, please refer to the list on below or reach out to our customer support team for assistance. Additionally, you can connect the player to other devices such as computers, laptops, and TVs. Please note that if your car has an Android system, ensure that it is version 4.4 or above. If your car model is not listed, an additional audio conversion box may be required.

If that works as advertised, hey, yeah!

Does it? 

[Ken Dryden]

7 hours ago, Coda said:

This is a nice one.  It works with USB input, is small and discreet so as not to attract attention in your car.  It only has the one cable, so you don't use an audio cable to attach to your car speakers.  It works when placed both vertically or horizontally.

Amazon.com: External USB CD Player for Car, Homlab Portable Plugs in CD Player with Extra USB Cable, for Car Without CD Player, Laptop, TV, Mac, Computer, for Android 4.4 and Above Navigation, Black : Electronics
 

• User-Friendly Operation: You can enjoy your favorite CDs in car in seconds. Just connect the external CD player to the USB port of your car and insert the CD. The USB CD player will automatically read the disc, and you can easily access the music list through the car's flash drive resource.
• More Compact Size - This portable CD player is the perfect solution for cars without built-in CD players. It is thinner than most car CD player in the market. But features with enhanced chipset at the same time. It has better reading capabilities, anti-skip functionality, compatibility with various formats, noise reduction.
• Additional 1m USB Cable: The car CD player comes with a free 1m USB cable. This allows you to place it anywhere you desire, such as the car center console, dashboard, or glove box. It is more convenient for storage and changing disc.
• Impressive Music Enjoyment: With this USB portable CD player, you can fully immerse yourself in the music or audio books from your collection. Nothing can stop the music coming out from your car stereo. No matter it is placed horizontally or vertically or the car bumps. Please note that the initial reading process may require a bit of patience.
• Wide Compatibility: This car CD player offers wide compatibility with thousands of car models. For specific compatibility information, please refer to the list on below or reach out to our customer support team for assistance. Additionally, you can connect the player to other devices such as computers, laptops, and TVs. Please note that if your car has an Android system, ensure that it is version 4.4 or above. If your car model is not listed, an additional audio conversion box may be required.

I ordered this one in hopes that it will work fine. I can always return it.

[JSngry]

I can "work" an iPad, I help my wife on it all the time, but only after I start figuring out how Apple thinks I should be thinking, which is not how I do think.

Besides, if you're going to eat that Marie Calendar pie, you're still going to have to know how to work the oven. That pie's not going to come out of the box and fix itself.

What you should be asking me is how I got the state to give me an iPad just for getting hearing aids. That one still makes me laugh!