sunsalem

I need to put a player in my new Z06.
Unfortunately, there isn't anywhere in the cabin to put one.
I thought about a spot in the hatch behind the right taillight.

Hoping for a changer, but will take most anything of quality.

Suggestions anyone?

markcz

Is there a need for you to play an actual CD in the car? If not, burn your collection to MP3's and put them on a thumb drive

If you must have a CD player in the car for whatever reason, you can get one of the portable/personal models at Wal-Mart for about $20, then use a 3.5 to 3.5 cord to plug it in under the armrest. You can keep it behind/under the passenger seat.

sunsalem

This seems like the most sensible approach to me.


If I plug it into any of the car's USB connections will the on-board audio system "sense" it and will be able control the volume, track selection, etc.?

Trios

The personal models don't come with USB connections and aren't designed to be controlled over USB. For volume, you'd just turn the CD player up all the way and use the headunit's volume control from there.

If you want to be able to control the track selection from the headunit, you need to move forward into this century just a little bit. You would use a computer to take your CD collection and do what's called 'ripping,' which makes files on the computer from each of the tracks on the disc. You'd want to rip to the 'MP3' format files to make sure they're compatible.

Then you move those MP3 files you created onto a thumb drive and plug the thumb drive in to the car, and presto! Your whole music collection, all those CDs taking up space and requiring you to change discs every 60-80 minutes, are now available right from the headunit, in a sortable, searchable list. You can now listen by album like you did with CDs, or by artist or genre, or just hit random and play something new from your collection each time.

sunsalem

Sorry, I'm a bit of a Luddite...does this mean there is no way for me to easily hook up a personal/portable CD to the Z's system?


I guess I could live without track control, but volume control would be mandatory.

Trios

Ok, the Z has an auxiliary input. It looks like this:





See that little round hole next to the USB port? You would plug one of these:



into the round hole, and the other end into one of these:



You would turn the volume UP on the disc player all of the way, an then use the volume **** on your car stereo to control the volume.

You will have no control over playing, pausing, skipping, etc without pressing buttons on the disc player, so you'd have to keep that thing within easy reach.

Trios

I should also say that you're trying to force an audio format created in the 1970's into a 2016 model vehicle. CD audio is literally 37 years old.

The C7 is just the first of a wave of vehicles that won't support your CD collection; you'd really be better served by learning how to use the new (and frankly, much, much better/easier) methods of playing music NOW, instead of trying to force each new car you buy to go back 40 years.

sunsalem

Some reasons for my resistance:

1) I have > 5,000 CDs, which I cycle thru regularly.
2) Don't have "favorite" songs (per se), I nearly always listen to ALL of a disk before ejecting.
3) At 60 years old and not in the best of health I'm not too inclined to invest the necessary time and expense to copy my collection onto USB sticks.
According to my rough estimate: 5,000 disks @ 5 minutes recording time = 417 hours.
4) Generally, I demand the best in audio quality I can muster...compressed audio is not that.


BTW, hello from Oregon's capitol!

Trios

Hello fellow Oregonian. I may be living in the Seattle area, but Gladstone will always be home.

I can completely understand all the points except for 4. High-bitrate MP3s ripped with a quality encoder are virtually indistinguishable from CD-quality audio. I thought this was probably a concern of yours so I looked into FLAC on the C7 (lossless compression, meaning pure CD quality just with a lower filesize) but unfortunately the car doesn't recognize FLAC.

There are services you can ship your CD collection to and they return them to you along with the digital copies of them. It would be expensive, one service I looked at (http://www.musicshifter.com/packages.php) does it for $1/disc including both MP3 format and FLAC format conversions (so you'd have the CD-quality audio for playing on an iPod or future cars that support FLAC). They'd probably be willing to give you a volume discount on 5000 CDs.

sunsalem

The added expense hardly seems worth it if I can make a portable work reasonably well.
Can you recommend one?

Trios

It would be worth it to me; you'd have your entire music library, all 5000 plus discs, available at your fingertips at any time, anywhere. In an earlier post you said you wouldn't want to put them on USB sticks. Let me state clearly that all 5000 CDs will fit on a single 256GB thumb drive, which would cost you, say, $80.

Edit: Also, you don't have to go the whole-collection-at-once route either. You're talking about taking a CD out of your collection and walking out to the car with it. Instead, take the CD, walk to the computer, take 5 minutes to rip it to a thumb drive, and then go out to the car. Each time you do this you're adding to your digital collection, and later when you want to listen to a certain track that you've already ripped, you don't have to go back to the CDs.

Portable CD players are all pretty much the same these days, they're $20 knock-offs of the high quality Sony or Panasonic units from the late '90's and early '00's. The playback quality is going to be equal on any of them, I'd just go into Wal-Mart and buy whatever is on the shelf.

sunsalem

That isn't too bad.

Hmmmm, you make it sound pretty easy.

Lemme try this...if it doesn't work for me, I'll try your other suggestion.

sunsalem

I went to Walmart and Best Buy looking for a portable.
I found 3.
None had USB and all needed batteries to operate.


It occurred to me I may have overlooked another source for playing CDs: external optical disk players/writers for computers.
These are usually powered by USB and do play disks.
The question becomes whether they pass sound and can withstand the vibrations/bouncing of the Z without skipping.


What do you think?

Trios

I already told you that none of the portable players would use USB; you're going to need to use that 3.5mm audio jack (the one with the headphone plug on both ends) to connect the disc player to the car. You can probably buy a 12v adapter to use the player without batteries, most of the portables should have a small power input plug.

I *highly* doubt the car would recognize an external USB CD-ROM drive, but stranger things have happened.

markcz

The C6Z won't recognize a PC CD drive

Try burning a dozen or so of your favorites to a thumb drive, then as suggested just burn a few at a time whenever you want new tunes. Start with a small memory stick that's only $10.

The stock radio has some quirks when it comes to playing songs off USB, so you may have to play with folders to get it just right, or you could put different types of music onto different drives.

sunsalem

I wonder if a portable DVD player sans screen would work?


Well, anyway...I'm heading up to Fry's in Portland this morning to see what I can find.
Should be able to find something that will work.

Trios

There is nothing that you can plug into the USB port of your C7 that will allow you control playing CDs from the head unit. You're going to have to give up on this.

The portable CD player is going to be your best bet if you absolutely have to play CDs. You'll only be able to control volume from the car; everything else will have to be done on the CD player itself.

sunsalem

Went to Fry's hoping for a nice selection to choose from....uhhh, no.
There were 3 models from 2 manufacturers I have never heard of.


Got pi$$ed and bought a thumbdrive out of frustration.
However, it will likely be a long time before I use it.
When I got home, the Mrs. gave me her recently departed Daddy's little player to shut me up.

sunsalem

You're right, I have to face the music (pun intended).

A thought did occur to me this afternoon...
Buy a normal auto disk player and build a small, tight wooden box around it and put it inside the hatch as I originally considered.
Of course, I would have to have a wireless remote to make it all work.

Trios

How are you going to connect it to the car's stereo?