Has anyone added a CD player to a Prime Advanced?

I wonder if the car would recognize a portable USB cd player plugged into the USB port,

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

I have a portable BluRay/CD player. I just plugged it in and it DID power up, BUT the vehicle did not recognize or see the player, much less the CD I had in it. The USB audio source selection never illuminated. It stayed grayed out.

 

Yes, it's right in the middle console area just behind the cup holders next to the USB port and 12V power.

 

you might want to get one that's made for jogging (e.g. on a suspended transport) in order to soak up the bumps otherwise you may have an inordinate amount of skips (although the prius tends to be a bit cushy it's not a caddy)

 

Not to sound snarky, but I'm wondering why ripping them to flash drives isn't the easiest and best answer?

You don't have to do them all....rip a couple you want to listen to....listen...move on.

Even with a CD player..you can only listen to one at a time.

 

I bought the Plus version on purpose (I actually like the smaller screen and the CD player) but to answer your question, get a portable CD player. If you don't want to add to landfills with lots of dead batteries, plug it into the cigarette lighter area. To pump the sound into the car there are a few options (bluetooth, etc) but you can go low tech. Buy an "FM transmitter" which are made exactly for this kind of thing, and plug it into the headphone jack of the portable CD player... the sound will then come out of your car's FM radio.

Years ago in my 1984 Toyota Corolla I wanted to pump the sound from my portable Sony shortwave radio into my car, so I used a cassette adapter to get the sound into the speakers (and let the long antenna wire hang out the window)... but since cars don't have cassettes anymore, if you're going low-tech, they still sell FM transmitters you can just plug into your portable CD player to have the sound come over your car's FM radio.

 

you can get an AV input adapter harness and hook up a portable dvd player. the audio would be as good as CD quality, not degraded FM quality.

 

I have to agree with @The Electric Me here. Ripping them onto flash drives seems to be the easiest, the cheapest, the safest, and most error free way to go. By doing so, you are in effect backing-up all of your CDs. You can play all 100+ books from your console and never have to fiddle with CD or player while driving. The car even remembers exactly where you left off if you stop the car in middle of a book. I don't think those features are available on a portable CD player. With physical disks in a car, they are so prone to damages by heat, by handling, and other elements. That's just my two cents.

 

I have thousands of CDs, and I listen to them while driving. I'm not going to spend a year ripping those to mp3s. I find it bizarre that the Advanced doesn't have a CD player but the cheapest one does. I see that in the specs on Toyota's page for the Prime. I'll find a solution, but it's annoying to not have a built-in CD player. I'm picking up my new Prime Advanced tomorrow. The salesman says CD are out. They aren't out for me. I will still be listening to CDs 10 years from now and beyond.

 

You’ve probably thought of this, and it wouldn’t be very elegant, but a “Diskman” style portable player would probably work? Think most have a 3.5mm output that would plug into the Prime’s 3.5mm input?

 

or something like: HOTT CD611T

 

I just ripped a CD to a flash drive and tried it in my '17 Prius Prime Plug-in. Nothing. Nada. I'm going to try a COOAU Portable CD Player Bluetooth. Got the idea from SteveMucc for suggesting HOTT CD611T. Will see.

 

What file format did you use? The car can recognize only MP3/WMA/AAC format on USB memory card.

 

Reading the reviews for units like this sound like they can only connect to Bluetooth speakers, not synch with multimedia car systems. I forget if the Prime has a audio-in jack you could plug in to.

I have had success importing CDs into iTunes and then finding the downloaded songs directories and copying them to a USB drive. I import in MP3 format.

 

That's what I did, copied from iTunes. The Prime has a USB port, which is where I popped my flash drive. So, here's a dumb question, was what I copied from iTunes in MPG3 format? How can I tell?

 

In iTunes if you right-click on a song and click the 'File' tab it will tell you information about the song file itself, what 'kind' it is (MPEG audio file in my case) and the format (MPEG-1, Layer 3) which means an mp3 file. I don't think that's the default fo rimporting, that's configurable under Edit->Preferences, the General tab, then there is an 'import settings' button where you can choose the import format.