Please read the following in a friendly tone of voice - I'm not trying to be a jerk, but I am worried about how the tone might be misread.
Did you know that iTunes (and other programs) can take the music from CDs and turn them into MP3's? It's been doable since the mid '90's. For nearly 20 years, this has been an easy thing to do. Granted, MP3 players didn't take off until 2001, but it's still been more than a decade since the iPod popularized MP3 players, and changed how people listen to music.
Look, my 80 year old father has converted all of his extensive collection of 1,000+ Jazz LPs to MP3, and without my help. If he can do that, then age is not an excuse.
The world changes, all the time. Especially computers and media. CDs are dying media and yes you can buy them from a small band, but you can convert that CD and put it on your MP3 player or phone in about 5 minutes.
5 minutes. Even the laziest person in the world has to admit that's not difficult.
Now I get the argument for having a physical copy. I tell people every day that you can look at a photograph from 1860, and you can't look at a computer file from 2000, if it was saved on a floppy (gone) Zip (gone) SyQuest (gone) Jazz (gone) etc, etc, etc. (print your photos is the lesson here). So you can still buy CDs if you want, but your car is not your home stereo.
Why should any manufacturer skate to where the puck has been instead of where it's going? Why should they invest a few hundred dollars per car in costs to support a legacy format? Should they have kept cassette players in cars for the mix-tape crowd?
I was happy that my MINI has an auxiliary audio port going into it. If it hadn't, I might have not bought the one that I did, I'd have bought a later model that did have one. I don't want or need full integration (the phone is better than any car software), just a way to get sound from the phone to the car. That's it. Heck, I don't even bother with the radio. I stream Pandora and Spotify from my phone.
And before you accuse me of being some kind of hipster kid, I'm 45. I just skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it's been.
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Sometimes when I skate to where the puck is going to be..... It's not thar....
Agree with everything your said Zapski... Been doing the same thing with my collection...
And I'm not 45....
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Sure..... It'll work down there....
Just park real close to the main check in at Fontana Village Resort.... Maybe two wheels up on the sidewalk.... Get close enough and you'll be able to snag their WIFI signal.... You play your cards right.... You just might be able to pull the Gnatster part way past the front lobby main doors....
Shouldn't be a problem listening to you favorite tunes down there....
Heck.... Roll down your windows and pop the sunroof... Share your tunes with the rest of the group checking in... It'll be a hoot....
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Actually, as long as we're on the topic, MP3 is an obsolete format too. iTunes uses M4A these days, has for years. You can set it to encode lossless AAC as well, the file sizes are larger but if it matters to you the sound is better.
But with all the other noises in the car, it's not really noticeable to most mortals.
And at MOTD or other place where coverage may be spotty, just have the songs stored locally on your iPad / iPhone / Cheap iPod knockoff / whatever. You can get a 4 GB player for under $40 that will hold nearly a thousand songs and plug into the auxiliary port. Problem solved. -
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Time to learn then, it's the world we live in and it's not changing back.
MP3, AAC, M4A, etc are all file formats, like .doc or .txt. They're different ways of converting audio to digital. Each has a strength and a weakness, like how true the file sounds to the original, vs how much space it takes to store. Usually there's a tradeoff; the smaller the file, the less the quality. Usually we just use the generic term MP3 to mean any digital audio file.
Most MP3 Players can handle a variety of file types these days, so it's really all behind-the-scenes stuff. The default settings in iTunes or any other similar programs are probably good enough for car stereos.
iTunes can convert your CDs to a file that works on your MP3 player, and has been able to do so for nearly 20 years. So, really none of this is new stuff. MP3 players have totally replaced portable CD players over the last 10 years. The most popular is the iPod, but even those have been largely replaced by phones since 2007.
If you've bought any kind of smartphone in the last few years, it can play the music you've converted from CD, or have bought in any of the online stores that exist.
If you're still using a "feature phone" - aka plain old phone... then you can spend less than $40 for a simple MP3 player and do the same thing. -
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