Ok, in that case, I'd suggest you look in the audio forums. Either here, or on that evil other vette site.. I'm sure there are high end solutions out in car stereo land.

 

Can't afford the few bucks a month to listen to commercial free music? I listen to pandora and my flash drive for music. And my C6 came with a CD player which I never listen to.

 

You lost your CD drive due to packaging, it's that simple. Everything else is an excuse (this has nothing to do with young people, it was cold and calculated). Cadillacs have them in the glove box (for now).

If you don't move the optical drive then you have to reserve space behind the dash for it. If you don't have one you are free to repackage the interior at random.

I think if a CD player would have fit in the glove box, they'd have put one in there. People would rather have storage.

Do a survey, ask people, cubby hole behind screen or CD Player. I bet you know which one will win (answer it's the cubby hole).

 

USB port and hit the shuffle button with the stick. I'm also retired and I just ripped 300 cd's. I kind of enjoy it.

 

Let's go back in the archives of the forum and see if we don't have the same 'I want my.............' threads in the late 70s for the 8 track, late '90s for the cassette, etc. There is always this type of debate as technology changes. "I can't believe they don't offer 8 tracks anymore", or "cassette players" or "X". It's inevitable, and we need to embrace it - or 'enjoy' complaining about it. Physical CD sales peaked in 1999 (!) and have declined since. Still lots being sold, but it's a technology in decline.

Oh wait, I guess we'd have a hard time finding any forum archives in the 70s and 80s.

 

And what is wrong with the KING? You guys knew the car didn't come with a CD player before you bought it. I couldn't believe GM left the CD player out. Bummer

 

With each CD ripped into it's own Folder you can pre-select what you want to hear .

Check your Math.

7,000 x 5 minutes ripping time = 35,000 minutes
35,000 Minutes/60 Minutes = 583.333 hours.
583.333 hours x 12 rips per hour = 7000 CD's

Still a Looong time to covert your CD's to Digital.
About 1 1/2 years @ 1 hour a day

 

One hour a day? I ripped mine while watching football games during Sunday. You get quite a few CD's done with that method.

 

I was being conservative
As I mentioned in my other post, Considering the way Technology is going, it's a good idea to save them all in Digital form regardless.
I don't' have thousands of CD's, but what I have I don't use anymore.
They've all been Converted to Digital
Even with my cheap stereo in the Shop, I play all the music on my phone through the AUX port.
Also Spliced into the XM module with a DIY AUX jack in my 2007 GMC Envoy and play all my music from the Phone

 

I'm 67, an electrical and computer engineer and as tech savvy as anyone of any age. I have always been an "early adapter"...way early.

Examples, first on my block with a VHS, first with DVD, first with Bluray and my pc is 4k HD and soon my home TV will be as well. Also, one of the first in high school to have an 8 track in my car, one of the first to have FM stereo in car, later one of the first to have in car CD.

I was also one of the first to explore and use MP3. At that early point in MP3 the sampling rate was very poor and music quality terrible. I had the best stereo for playing stereo LP records, when I was one of the first to switch to CD for home stereo the difference floored me. I was sold on CDs.

You own a CD you essentially own a copy of the studio master. Commercial interests have decided that they don't like this. They also have decided that, as in vehicles, that they don't like you "owning" and "controlling" "your" music in your vehicle. They want to sell it to you and shove it down your throat if necessary!

To me the use of CDs is all about music quality. Try a little test if you have the CDs. Find a millennial who listens to MP3s on earbuds. Have him listen to the same music, or exact song if you happen to have it, on CD with serious headphones. I've done this several times. It's is purely a riot to watch what happens. It's like they never heard the music before.

Even with my aging ears I can hear the difference loud and clear.

I am usually reading 6 or 8 books at a time around the house. Some might be science, some novels, some engineering, some cheap adventure stories. I prefer physical books. I know some people have tens of thousands of songs on their drives, or tens of thousands of books. How many songs do you listen to at once? How many books do you read at once?

When traveling or out for a drive I may take 12 or 15 CDs in a special case. I've got many hours of studio quality music in that small case and my small player that attaches to my laptop.

I would prefer to use CDs in my new Stingray*. I cannot stand the packaged music services and will not be using any of them. I don't need to impress anyone either now ( I like that! ) about how tech savvy I am. Everyone assumes I don't know anything. Until, for example, I shop for a new computer and enjoy making the salesperson soil their pants with my questions and comments about how it operates at machine language/chip level way way under the user interfaces etc.

I intend to deactivate, gut, remove if possible, the factory entertainment system. I might use the factory speakers but I doubt it...they are not good enough. I will replace the deactivated, gutted, or removed factory system with a new CD based plus broadcast radio system. Thank you very much. I will then have hundreds of songs available on an automatic CD changer instead of thousands on silicon. I'll be very very happy.

* I love my new Stingray. I considered a Z06. However, I decided to buy the Stingray since I much prefer the minimal styling, crisp, clean, and very purposeful. I have to tell you, going by comments I get when out in public with the car, that 99%+ of people have no idea it is even a vette. They think it is some kind of exotic. As for most people being more impressed if I had a Z06. I doubt it.

Having bought the SR I have plenty of spare change ( paid cash and would have for a Z06 too. ) to play with better quality CD based music.

Many will disagree yes. I know. It doesn't matter. My ears can tell the difference even at my age.

 

Ya fergut about da breakfast burrito.

 

Friendly guy,

Interesting perspective, and thanks.

I thought my ears were very good at 63, confirmed by medical hearing checks, but I can't really discern any difference between CDs and Bluetooth streaming in any car audio system I've owned, which supposedly included many good ones. I also have friends that would go nuclear if anyone tried to tell them that CDs are "master quality," because in their world only vinyl disks or magnetic tape carry that lofty distinction. They'd say digital will never represent music reality as well as analog does. They'd also say, it's ridiculous to think that great audio could ever be heard in any car, no matter what the cost--it's a lousy listening environment w/ bad acoustics. Some of these people are actually 20-somethings today.

I started moving all my CDs to Apple devices when they debuted in the early 00s, and every piece of music I own is on my current iPhone, 7 generations of Apple devices later. I stopped buying CDs about 10 years ago, and started purchasing songs and the occasional album on iTunes. They just easily migrate from device-to-device, and I now have a massive collection on a single small device, backed up by the "Cloud" so they theoretically can't be lost.

The thought of picking out CDs to take with me in the car sounds like a complete nightmare to me. What I thought I wanted to listen to a couple of hours ago has no relationship to what I might decide I want to listen to in the moment.

 

I an afford it. I choose not to waste my money and things that are easily available for free.

 

If it takes that long to rip them then just think how long it would take to actually listen to them! And this assumes you never listen to a song twice. And we all know that most CD's only have a song or two that it worth anything. Face it - you have a big waste of unnecessary music that you haven't listed to in decades. My bet is you'll have another vette before you get to the end of a 7000 CD collection.

 

Need more detail!

 

You obviously have the skills and inclination to rip out and install a whole new sound system. I'm sure you'll also have fun with the project.

However although I am 7 years older than you and my ears are not that great at hearing higher frequencies, the C7 has so much road noise other than listening (feeling) the base in my 3LT with Janis Joplin singing "Cry Baby" and similar "Oldies" -my preference - could not tell an MP3 from other music. Yep I can in my home sound system but that isn't even as good at a concert hall!

I have my CD's converted to MP3's and have ripped many others from YouTube. I have my radio playing in shuffle mode from an SD card (I have a 2014 C7) as soon as I start the car, it's seldom turned off and I rarely have a passenger. It does drown out some but by no means all of the road noise.

While your ripping out the sound system you need to consider adding lots of sound insulation. Many Threads on the subject.

 

You are 100% correct about sound quality. This issue is, in a car you will NEVER get good sound quality. 256 kpbs MP3's for 99% of all music is "good enough" in the car.

Of course at home you need to listen to music on CD, or even better Vinyl (since music is an analog product and analog medium captures it the best). This is why I still buy CD's (I refuse to stream music, or purchase it online in digital only format). But this doesn't change the fact that in your car you can't get this level of sound quality.

 

I have a good story to let you know how bad my hearing is. Back in the middle 90s I had my wife rip my records and CDs to mp3. For a few days she accidentally had it set for 32 kbps. Should have been 192 kbps. The punchline is this......I COULDN'T TELL THE DIFFERENCE! Talk about bad hearing.

 

If you still bought CDs and ripped them you'd have control over the format, and you can still sync them in the cloud (I have mine sync to my OneDrive). I get all my music on the two USB sticks (manual updates) for the cars, my iPhone (automatic with sync), in the cloud (automatic with ripping to HD) and even on my Xbox One (automatic from the cloud). The only thing I don't have in the cloud are my playlists as iTunes playlists would have to be manually recreated in Groove/OneDrive (you can't even upload M3U files from what I understand). I do however backup my M3U files and my iTunes library to various places, including the cloud so I won't really lose anything. I just need to manually manage the playlist changes.

 

Thanx for the correction of my math.
My offer still stands...anyone want to come over to my place and rip 'em for me?