CD player?

Yes, I know, and no, it doesn't. CDs are consider old tech.

 

I bought a portable CD player (about $30) to use until I can justify spending several hundred for a third party CD/DVD/Stereo replacement system for my 2020 AWD-e Prius. We use CD "Audio Books" from the library when on trips.

 

Grrrr!!!

 

Oh, really? Is that true for the Prius Prime LE model as well?
BTW, this thread may need to be moved to Gen4 forum?

edit: I checked the 2021 PP specs. Yap, the 2021 PP LE still has a single CD player.

 

CDs are going the way of 8-tracks and cassettes.

Copy them to USB thumb drives, while you still have a computer with an optical drive! Some people may already need to buy a separate USB-plug optical drive.

And note that for most ordinary mortals, you can now put your entire music collection onto a single USB thumb drive.

 

Except - that's fine for Podcasts. But MUSIC (Classical) - a USB just doesn't cut it - CDs are how I listen to it.

 

I'm with you on this. I gave up listening to Classical music, in fact, any music, in the car years ago. What passes as good audio fidelity these days isn't as good as a pre-WWII vinyl disc. Seriously!!! (Toscanini, Horowitz)

 

Also, all Prius lines except the L Eco comes with Intelligent Clearance Sonar (ICS) with Intelligent Parking Assist (IPA) and Blind Spot Monitor (BSM) with Rear Cross-Traffic Alert (RCTA) whereas those features are available only in Prius Prime Limited.

 

Between the impairments of the vehicle equipment, the very high noise floor during driving, the somewhat low volume caps I insist upon to delay the hearing losses witnessed in those around me, and the age of my ears, the higher bit rate versions on USB (direct plug-in, not Bluetooth) are perfectly good. And lower bit rates for podcasts.

To hear the difference of the full CD copy, I'm going to need better equipment in a quiet studio-like environment. A moving car doesn't come anywhere near close.

But the bit rate of raw uncompressed CD-Audio data is easily within the transfer rates of even the old slow original USB standard, let alone the much faster modern versions. And with terabyte USB flash drives now available, one can now put a thousand raw uncompressed CDs onto a single thumb drive.

Does anyone make head units that can play full CD-Audio-format data from the USB port? There is no technical reason not to, and the benefit of getting rid of the physical plastic disc from the automotive environment, is considerable.

(Or does DRM preclude this path? The last time I copied full audio CDs was on a PC predating much of the DRM.)

 

I use this size drive, which is closer to a little fingernail than a whole thumb. Two almost identical copies, one in each car, copied from a master collection on a tower PC. Users wishing terabyte capacities still need whole-thumb sized devices, not these fingernail-sized ones, at least until next year :

That long indexing delay is annoying, but I'm seeing it only after changing device contents. After other car restarts, it seems reasonably quick. The headunit must have a way of knowing when it needs to re-index, vs. retaining the previous index.

New a couple months ago, the drive in my Prius began sometimes freezing the headunit. It started right after wiping it clean and reflashing a refreshed 30GB collection all at once, leaving the device very hot, possibly overheated. Swapping drives between cars seems have fixed or hidden the problem.

 

The other thing I've found is that USB drives aren't very reliable. Over the years, I've tossed quite a few out. And some which will work for a transfer between laptops, won't work in the PRIUS.

Proper Audio CDs, never had a problem with any.

CD-RW - I've got about 20 - and only tossed 1 or 2 in many years I've been using them.

 

OTOH, of the old data CDs from my old workplace (20th Century), the handful that I have checked, are all now unreadable.

I still have my factory-stamped music CDs, so can go back to them if the multiple flash and HDD copies are all lost. Not having them in the car, helps preserve them. The oldest are now well past what we were originally told would be their life expectancy, though the sampling I've gone back to hasn't failed to read. I haven't looked up the more modern estimates of life expectancy.

 

Some CD-R disks I've got were the same - they were made for a once-only burn. And I think some didn't have the same quality as others. We had a good run with VERBATIM CDs (but they make terrible USBs). I have the feeling that CD-RW were better quality generally - (for higher $$€€ ££). We did use CD-RW for computer backups briefly but went to DATs, which they were using when I retired.

 

Mine were just CD-Rs, because the price difference compared to CD-RWs was enormous, and I wasn't expecting to reuse CD-RWs enough times to make them worthwhile.

And the types used very different materials for the data layer. Had I known of CD-RWs expecting to have a longer life expectancy, I would have switched at some point, after their prices came down.

I first bought some CD-Rs back when they were about $20 each. Back when that was still real money. Sold only as singles, long before they became cheap enough to put in those cakebox stacks without armed guards. Burn session setup problems on the first attempts were extremely painful.

 

I adopted a backup strategy of using multiple (Rotated for redundancy) external hard drives for my file storage years ago. Since they are only spinning when doing a backup (or, much less often, recovering a file), they last a long time and they keep getting less expensive per MByte (GByte now). My web site files are stored in three places: My web server, My active PC (A Flash drive now, where I edit the files before uploading) and in the backup HDs for my PC. I never delete files, I just move to larger HDs when space gets low.

CDs got too small a long time ago for backup and then DVDs became too small soon thereafter, hence my HD strategy.

There is no reasonable substitute for CDs in a car for "Audio Books on Tape" when driving across country. We get the Audio books on CD at our local library for free.

JeffD