Ford to stop putting CD players in cars.

Keith wrote: I have to admit I bought an iPod Touch simply so I could run Pandora in the garage. It's awesome.

ProDarwin wrote: I do stream music in my car though. I use "the radio". Its free and there are lots of stations to choose from. I'm surprised how much people NEED to be listening to music of their choosing anytime they are driving.

Dunno where you live, but around here "the radio" is either playing commercials or idiot hosts talking. Once in a while, they'll play some music but it's usually the same old classic rock and roll that's been played to death. I swear, the only qualification you need to be a radio DJ these days is the ability to talk on demand. Radio is good if you just need some noise, but it's not good if you need music. I actually listen to audiobooks most of the time when I'm driving. It's great, especially on long trips. You can either get them from the library or from places like Podiobooks.com.

Outside of D.C. I have 5 stations on the presets. The funny thing is about NPR is it has new content every day. The others are music, and I can usually find plenty to listen to on them. Yeah, they repeat but hearing the same stuff doesn't really bother me on the way to work and back. In a 20 min drive you don't hear that much stuff repeated. The radio host talking is about 50/50 entertaining/annoying, but again... I can flip stations. Actually, when I get to work I'll pull up IHeartRadio on my phone and continue listening to the same station in the morning.

I agree on the audiobooks - on any longer drives I have I load up a few on a USB drive (if I can remember). I listen to a lot from www.bookshouldbefree.com (books that old enough they are no longer protected). Good stuff on there, but some of the readers aren't great. All of the Sherlock Holmes stuff will keep anyone occupied on a long trip.

SyntheticBlinkerFluid wrote:

mtn wrote:

SyntheticBlinkerFluid wrote: I still use the radio in my workvan, only because it has an AM/FM. But I agree that radio stations suck at least in the Chicago area.

Agreed.

Seriously, XRT - Used to like them, but I don't know when I started to not, the newer hipster music I didn't care for. The Drive - Great music at one point, but got waaaay to laid back for my taste. Also got repetitive. Q101 - Hasn't been the same since the 90s. B96 - Hip Hop and Party music, not my cup of tea. Kiss FM - Top 40 music, wife likes it, end of story. The Mix - Descent new music, wife likes it 104.3 - Used to be a popular oldies station now I have no clue. 94.7 - used to be a good classic rock station, changed to modern alternative, went country, went 80's, back to alternative, then to top 40, now it's an oldies station. US-99 - Used to be a great country station, now they just harbor all the new pop country that I hate. 97.9 - Classic Rock gone wrong, they play everything that sucks. Sorry, I can only take Metallica and AC/DC in small doses, not every hour on the hour. 100.7 - Joliet Classic Rock station that used to be good, now is the same 97.9 I listen to 103.9 XRock out of Indiana. Great Classic Rock, bearable Djs, and they have Bob and Tom in the morning and that usually helps my slow mornings.

I've been listening to 104.3 recently, and it is okay. I used to love US-99, but since I've been down at school (in Bloomington) and been exposed to two good country stations, as well as a really good folk/bluegrass/alternative/blues station, I can't listen to it at all.

carguy123 wrote: I don't see CDs going away anytime soon. They are a much simpler, and cheaper way to distribute audio. It would be way to expensive to have to give away thumb drives.

I bet they go away quicker than you think.

Apple isn't going to be releasing any more new products with optical drives, look how quick floppy disks died after the introduction of the original iMac.

m4ff3w wrote: I bet they go away quicker than you think.

Yep, look how long the "walkmen" cd players lasted compared to MP3 players (for numerous reasons). They just need to figure out a way to easily transfer music from computer to car (and they have multiple ways now, people just need to warm up to them).

on the one hand, it's cool to have a tiny 2GB thumbdrive that has my extensive Metallica, Anthrax, Monster Magnet, Slayer, Volbeat, Foo Fighters, and Megadeth collection all right there and ready to go with room to spare..

but on the other hand, it's cool to have to plan out what you want to listen to and grab watever cd's or cassettes you think you'll want to listen to.

i'm a little bit old school- i like the tactile experience that a physical medium like a cd or casstte tape offers.. i can hold it- look at it- and know that i own that and no one can take that away from me.

i have a bunch otf mix tapes that i made back in the late 80's and early 90's, and each one of them is like a time capsule that helps me remember the thought process that led me to putting "Suffer the Masses" by Flotsam and Jetsam right after "Institutionalized" by Suicidal Tendencies, which was then followed by the live version of "Whiplash" by Metallica and then the "Happy Happy, Joy Joy" song from Ren and Stimpy.. there is no "shuffle" or "random" button- you listen to them in that order or try to fast forward thru them... as cool as mp3 files are, you can't really do that with them. you can put them in order, but you can listen to them in whatever order you want..

ProDarwin wrote: Outside of D.C. I have 5 stations on the presets. The funny thing is about NPR is it has new content every day. The others are music, and I can usually find plenty to listen to on them. Yeah, they repeat but hearing the same stuff doesn't really bother me on the way to work and back. In a 20 min drive you don't hear that much stuff repeated. The radio host talking is about 50/50 entertaining/annoying, but again... I can flip stations.

It's not so much that the songs repeat on a 20 minute drive, but that it's just the same old stuff over and over and over. Dinosaur rock, pop tarts or country. I started listening to country just so I'd hear something different - and I found out where melody had been hiding out

I used to carry 400 CDs in my car- no kidding. But even with care, they gradually got scuffed up with tens of thousands of miles of vibration in the big cases I used and they wouldn't play right. I'm still replacing damaged albums. Doesn't happen with my iPods.

If you are looking for a good morning show, check out the podcasts for Preston and Steve from 93.3 WMMR in Philly.

ProDarwin wrote: I agree on the audiobooks - on any longer drives I have I load up a few on a USB drive (if I can remember). I listen to a lot from www.bookshouldbefree.com (books that old enough they are no longer protected).

Thanks. Good to know about.....I've been reading/listening to some Jules Verne (The Mysterious Island) on my Kindle, so I'm definitely in the old book vibe right now....

I've driven all through the states, and live close enough to three of them to get a bunch of stations. I agree. Your radio SUCKS. I didn't realize how good we have it here.

The sound quality of MP3's (and even some new CD's) is awful. I can't listen to them, even in a car. After putting a decent system in his own car, my son finally realized what I was talking about, and found a way to fix his MP3's. I'll find out what it is.

In my GT, I just took out the garbage Sony head unit the PO installed, and in it's place I'll be using a T amp, with portable CD player It.s not ideal, but it works, and it saves me almost 10 lbs.

I don't think I'd ever buy a head unit without a USB port, SD card reader or 3.5mm headphone jack ever again. I ripped an aftermarket CD deck OUT of my Lotus and put in one that has all of the above, and no CD.

I agree that MP3s can sound pretty grotty if ingrates who have no idea what they're doing encode them (see: 80% of MP3s on the internet). Sometimes the source material sucks too (poorly mastered CDs) but it is possible to get pretty good sounding MP3s with only a small sacrifice in file size. And who cares about using 2MB per minute vs 1MB these days? I don't.

I'm still waiting for a true multi-format head unit that can handle OGG Vorbis, WAV, FLAC, and others direct from the USB. This would be trivial to make but product managers are morons so no one does. I have an older Chinese ("Blackmore") HU from 2006ish that has a quite decent OGG decoder that I'm never letting out of my clutches ever, still haven't seen another one yet.

I usually store my MP3s/digital audio in nested directories that represent full albums/longplay mixes and listen to them that way. I change the order by renaming the directories ("001 SynSUN Downtempo EP / 002 Pearsall There must be a future / 003 Astral Projection etc. etc.) This generally works if whoever wrote the player software wasn't an imbecile. You can't always count on that.

OTA radio is completely irrelevant to my listening interests. There is literally NOTHING that I want to hear that comes over the air in 95% of cities.

Up untill I got the Focus in 2001 all I ever had was AM/FM radios. The Focus came with a 6-disk CD player so I wnet out and got a bunch of CD's. When I bought the Transit Connect it only had a single CD player and 2 rather crappy speakers..

I had an Alpine W900BT HU and some good speakers put in. The W900 has GPS, Bluetooth phone, and best of all a USB port. I ripped all my CD's to a thumb drive and even had a local company convert a lot of the old vinyl I had to MP3's. Now I have ~500 songs available.

I have the songs organized in folders, 60's Rock, Country, etc. I can have it play a folder or I can set up playlists. It also will let me select a specfic album, or artist(even if he/she has songs in different folders). And probably choose in other ways I haven't discovered yet.

Some other neat features: It will play movie DVD's(haven't tried that yet) and has a backup camera.

Zomby woof wrote: In my GT, I just took out the garbage Sony head unit the PO installed, and in it's place I'll be using a T amp, with portable CD player

I need info on this. I wanted to do that to my BMW to save weight

The miata i just got actually has some nice Clearwater components and a high end Kenwood deck with a USB input.

And Sirius radio.

I attached an 8gig USB thumb drive to the USB input, but i haven't used it yet, because i'm really liking Sirius. The quality is good, but nothing amazing, and the stereo sounds great. (I'm still looking for the amp in this thing, there's no way this sound is being driven just by the headunit.)

But, it's a convertible, so at higher speeds, the bass in particular gets drowned out.

At home, nothing gets played on the good stereo except for CDs if i'm listening, Pandora for background music.

Schmidlap wrote:

wbjones wrote: ...but with a thumb drive / mp3 player how do you know what songs are coming up next ... my albums / cd's all have lists of the songs that I can access at a glance

If the files were downloaded from a reputable source or ripped from the CD properly each file will contain info about the song title, band, album, track number etc. When it's loaded onto your MP3 player (or other device) you can sort by the artist, album name, genre etc. On my ipod (and I assume most other devices) I select 'Music' then seletc 'Artists', then select the album I want to listen to (or I can just hit play and it will start playing the first album in the list and continue through to the last), then it gives me a list of the songs on that album. I can hit play to listen to the whole album or select just one song from the list. The screen even shows the album cover or other graphics the band wanted to include. If I don't want to choose something specific, I can just hit 'shuffle' and it will randomly play songs. I listen to my music a lot more since I got an ipod than when I just had CDs. It really does make it a lot more convenient (aside from the ripping part). Bob

and the liner notes are where ?

You read liner notes when you drive?

mad_machine wrote:

Zomby woof wrote: In my GT, I just took out the garbage Sony head unit the PO installed, and in it's place I'll be using a T amp, with portable CD player

I need info on this. I wanted to do that to my BMW to save weight

I took the HU, amp, wiring, and alarm out today and dropped 20 lbs even after the new system was installed. 20 lbs makes a noticeable difference in a Swift.

The T amps I bought came from ebay seller Techex online (I think). I've been using one in my shop since last year, and I like the sound. I'll let you know how it works out in the car. Hookup is simple. RCA or 1/8 headphone jack in, and regular spring terminals for the speaker outs. Since it's going in the car, buy the cheaper one that does not include a power supply.

Found it

http://cgi.ebay.ca/TA2020-Stereo-Amplifier-Tripath-12v4A-adapter-car-mp3-/120737153411?pt=UK_CarsParts_Vehicles_CarParts_SM&hash=item1c1c7ec183#ht_3980wt_907

I bought 4 from this guy with no problems.

I only get MP3s or vinyls. I can carry a E36 M3 ton of music on my iPod set it on random and I still hear new stuff and then vinyls are just awesome. I don't see the point in buying CDs anymore.

Keith wrote: You read liner notes when you drive?

no but my albums and cd's come with them ... I can go back and re-read when ever I wish... mp3 ????

flountown wrote: If you are looking for a good morning show, check out the podcasts for Preston and Steve from 93.3 WMMR in Philly.

Absolutely True. I listen to it online every chance I get. (Actual radio reception sucks at my house)

I have 4216 items on my iPod. I know this because I listened to all of them in alphabetical order without skipping any. A lot of them are podcasts, many of which are an hour long. I mostly listen to my iPod in the car, so it took about 7 months to listen to all of it. I have a stock chevy stereo, iPod adapter thingy that plugs in the back, decently ripped music quality and a noisy ass van. It works out alright.

wbjones wrote:

Keith wrote: You read liner notes when you drive?

no but my albums and cd's come with them ... I can go back and re-read when ever I wish... mp3 ????

That sort of information is available on the internets! You can even use the Facebooks to actually communicate with the band, assuming you're listening to an active group. Liner notes are just text and pictures, the Internet is good at text and pictures. And videos.

I'm 35 and remember 8 tracks

Zombiewoof i had a friend that did something similar in a miata. ditched the stereo then used an equalizer with internal amp with an aux input to use his ipod.

i liked that it was...i guess 1/4 din size and the install looked clean with a storage cubby underneath. It was sort of like this one..... http://www.overstock.com/Electronics/Pyramid-808-10-band-4-channel-Graphic-Equalizer-Amplifier/3374870/product.html

i'm 31 and i've OWNED 8 tracks.... but never did have a super awesome 8 track playing car... but a buddy of mine did lol...

failboat... that EQ amp is pretty awesome... i've got an old EQ with a "cd input" on the front that i've been thinking of using but has no amp build in... but I do have an older cd head unit... or I could try to use the volvo OEM amp...