The car I just bought doesn't have a CD player!! I thought all cars could play at least 1 disk. Am I old or what?

I don't use iTunes (I guess I could but trying to avoid as much as possible). So, I don't really have music on my phone (well, wife's phone - her car).


The manual says I can listen to music stored on a USB drive.

If I have CD's, how do I get music onto the USB drive? I know how to get the music onto my PC (using Media Player). But then how do I put the music onto the USB drive so that the car can use it? I've only burned CD before.....

Use Exact Audio Copy software.

Rip the files into MP3 format, at the bitrate of your preference.

Place MP3's into folders onto the USB drive in the root directory. Folder name become Album names, and file names become track titles. You will typically want to use the track naming convention with a number at the beginning... "01 - Around the World" or something similar, so that when they are alphabetized in the album folder, you don't get the tracks out of order.

Depending on your car's player, you add album art and stuff to the folder and it sorts it all out for you.

A lot of software will do all the naming and titling for you based on the data burned into the CD. There is additional software out there that references databases and fixes the metadata in the files so you get consistent track names and stuff. I don't have any experience with it, but Mp3tag is popular.

Does your wife or you have Amazon Prime? If so, they have millions of songs and albums you can easily download to her phone, then she can listen to them using Bluetooth. It's what I do and it works great.

Jim

What is your car unit?

Depending on your car unit and what files they play.

I just put an Alpine ILX-207 in my truck.
I ripped my cd's to FLAC format and can play them all through my unit with a FAT32 formatted SSD drive (flash drive works too).

Your unit may require MP3, FLAC, WAV, WMF files.
Rip will be based what yours is capable of.
FWIW, FLAC or other lossless methods are the best quality but not required.
Go with what your unit supports.

Not sure what's in the car. Factory base model whatever it is.

Would like a high quality format. I've only found in the manual that music stored on a USB drive can be played. Let me dig through the manual more to see if I can find what formats. A lossless format would be nice.

We do have Prime but our phones are really small in storage. (bought the cheapest model available).

But maybe we can just do a few albums at a time - that's probably good enough. I'll try it out.

If her head unit supports Bluetooth, just have her use her phone and Spotify, iHeartradio, Amazon Music, etc to stream whatever she wants to listen to. Much less hassle than trying to rip a bunch of CD's.

You are absolutely not going to notice the difference between a mp3 and lossless audio on the base model stereo in a car. It'll for sure play mp3 and you can fit a ton of music on a $10 8gb drive.

quote:

Originally posted by bigdeal:
If her head unit supports Bluetooth, just have her use her phone and Spotify, iHeartradio, Amazon Music, etc to stream whatever she wants to listen to. Much less hassle than trying to rip a bunch of CD's.

I looked into that a bit and I think she would run out of cell data quota within a few days.

I second that I've never heard of a unit that would not play mp3. Rip the CD to your drive, plug it in and go. The car software probably sucks in indexing and navigating it, but that varies a lot.

I use itunes on my PC strictly for cataloging my music. Rip your CD's using itunes. Using Windows File Explorer, copy and paste whatever stored music you want to listen to in the car onto the thumb drive. Even an Android phone recognizes the cataloging format from itunes. Name of album, artist and individual track title. I've been doing it this way for a long time and it works very well.

quote:

Originally posted by Aeteocles:
You are absolutely not going to notice the difference between a mp3 and lossless audio on the base model stereo in a car. It'll for sure play mp3 and you can fit a ton of music on a $10 8gb drive.

This.
I have near 2k songs on a 16GB drive.

Only issue I ever had was I originally had it all loaded on a USB3.0 drive & it would freeze up.
Switched to a USB2.0 & no problems since.

I used a free CD rip software to pull all my CDs to the USB drive.

Windows Media Player can rip all your CDs. You can set the bitrate of ripping so your file sizes aren’t too large.

Then copy everything over to a your usb drive.

I bought a new Toyota Sienna for my business last year and it came with a USB input for iPhone/iPod/iPad, but also reads USB flashdrives. But I found that it does not play FLAC or wav. files. It plays mp3 and AAC formats just fine. I have an old iPod Touch, but also a 16g flashdrive with mp3 folders. I yet to play a disc in the CD player.

Get a low profile USB drive. The one that doesn't stick out very far, and looks almost flush with the port.

Thanks guys...

I tried WMA Lossless and the car could read file titles but 'didn't find any music files' so I ripped the CD again using FLAC and it works.

The UI is not too bad. And the great thing is that I can play my CD in the car after ripping them to a USB drive!! This is actually more convenient than CDs I think. And don't need to use our phones (which don't really have space for music anyways).

Thanks for the help!!!!

If she has a phone made in the last five years, just use it as an iPod/MP3 player through USB, Audio/AUX, or Bluetooth.

We all have smaller versions of computers in our pockets every day, use it to it's fullest.

quote:

Originally posted by konata88:
Thanks guys...

I tried WMA Lossless and the car could read file titles but 'didn't find any music files' so I ripped the CD again using FLAC and it works.

The UI is not too bad. And the great thing is that I can play my CD in the car after ripping them to a USB drive!! This is actually more convenient than CDs I think. And don't need to use our phones (which don't really have space for music anyways).

Thanks for the help!!!!

This is definitely a plus in terms of technological advances. You lose having to shuffle CDs or CD cartridges.

I use mediamonkey to manage my library, and sometimes rip. It's more convenient to click a link to an analogkid torrent vs spending time ripping the CD....
320kbps mp3 in a car isn't going to be noticeable loss vs flac or CD. Hell, I can't tell a good mp3 rip from flac/CD on good home systems. I've tried blind A/B tests many times, if I get it right, it's usually a guess.

Mediamonkey has a really good interface for creating/editing playlists, auto-playlists, metadata lookup (gotta have those album covers...) and USB/SD card transfer (right click a playlist & select 'send to SD - F:...) The free version doesn't do 'automatic' stuff (metadata, covers, etc) but it is good enough to try out.

If you have a SD card reader, use that over USB - the interface will be quicker on most vehicles.

For car audio, the lossless formats are unnecessary, and you will get A LOT more music on your jump drive using mp3.

My car and phone have Blutooth, which works fine, but sometimes it is inconvenient to remember to turn my Blutooth on (I keep it off generally for better battery life) and it is much more convenient to just have a dedicated music jump drive plugged in.