Ok, if you want to ask me about audiophile equipment from the 70's and 80's I can be pretty helpful. But beyond the CD era I just have not kept up. I do know that I don't care for the sound quality of Sirius/XM, and I'm pretty dubious about mp3's depending on the system they are being played back on, so here goes.

I would like to be able to take music CD's and transfer them to a Smart Disk for playback in my C8. Is it as simple as copying each CD one at a time and the audio system in the C8 will recognize them?

Will they create their own folders for each CD, or will I need to manually create individual folders?

Right now I'm running 4 vehicles with Sirius/XM, and while I generally like the format and being able to use their app on my phone there is just too much audio information that gets lost, and the music sounds flat (not pitch wise, but dimensionally). I am considering switching everything over to Tidal streaming, or some other HD music streaming service.

As a side note, anyone know if a typical laptop does a decent job as a digital audio converter, or if it would be worth getting a "high end" DAC for use with my home audio? I have a cheapie DAC that I picked up so I could feed the digital audio signal from my TV to my home audio system....

 

Upload your song library to iTunes on your PC, laptop, tablet etc. and sync with your iPhone to download them to it. Pair you phone/car with Apple Car Play. Then use Apple Car Play to listen to music. With Car Play, you won't even need to take your phone out of your pocket/purse. Get in sit down start up and it connects seamlessly. It uses the controls on your Infotainment screen, Siri Voice, or steering wheel. Couldn't be simpler.

Similar for an Android phone. Don't have one so uncertain about Android Play, but is functionally no different.

Best news. You already own the best player you would otherwise buy.

 

I have converted most of my music over the years, and my suggestion is to simply buy the high quality mp3 fioes from Amazon of the like. It is tedious to copy, organize and properly tag your files. The real key with digitized music is having the tags properly populated, and the music players use that info to allow proper sorts. If you are happy with simply searching thrugh files and directories the just converting is fine. I would advise to fill in the tags as you do each song or album. I didnt in the beginning and it was tedious to do thousands of files. At this point I have over 15k songs which all fit on one low profile memory stick, I leave in a usb port in each car. I love having every piece of my music all the time.it sure beats the days of carrying a couple dozen cassette tapes or only having 10 CDs in a changer. Note that if tagged properly, you can even assign your buttons on the car stereo for different genres etc making it easy to simpky play different music quickly.

 

I have an Android phone, so I will look into the equivalent procedure for my phone.

 

Does Amazon now offer a HD flow service? I thought the Spotify and Amazon music services were still developing that ability, that's why I'm looking into Tidal.

 

 

My recommendation is to rip (not copy) your CDs to a computer in high quality MP3 format (320 kbps). This can be done using Windows Media player if you have a Windows computer. You can do lossless FLAC but you will need a different ripping program, you may have some problems with playback, and you won't be able to tell the difference in the C8 listening environment. Get a low profile USB flash drive, copy the ripped files to the USB drive, and leave that USB drive installed in the car's USB port. This way you 'l always have music without having to rely on a phone connection. You can rip the files directly to a USD flash drive but I find it handy to have them on my computer for easy transfer to other devices (like your phone) and for listening to them on my home entertainment system.

 

Just to add a bit of a twist to using your phone, I would suggest Spotify as a streaming source. You can set the audio to stream on the "Very high" setting which streams audio at up to 320 kbps. I like you enjoyed playing music and found that if I was buying content whether online or CD, Vinyl, I was spending a lot more than $10 a month. I tried the premium version of Spotify (No commercials, Higher quality sound) for a few months and didn't buy any new music and just downloaded content. After a while felt that I'll never buy another song again. For $10 I get access to all I want and have never come across an artist or song I couldn't get and I like all sorts of genres. Just a suggestion, but it will only cost you a months subscription to find if it works for you. Good Luck

 

• As suggested above, one option is to convert your music from CDs to high quality MP3s.
• If you are leaning towards Tidal, try Spoity and download the music to your phone using very high quality. Then compare Tidal vs. Spotify.

Regarding your TV to your home audio system. What is the source for your TV? Cable box or streaming device? You can connect your source via optical to a DAC, then to your home audio system. I would recommend a Rega DAC. In my office, I have an older Apple TV with optical out connected to this DAC, then to my audio system. There are more expensive options, one is - Ayre. I am very happy with the Rega DAC.

 

Apple Music or Spotify. Pick one, I think both are high enough quality for the BOSE system considering the high interior noise floor of the C8. The $10 a month is a bargain compare to the hassle and time of maintaining your own music library. And Apple Music is almost 100% Lossless at this point, meaning it's better than MP3. I'm not sure about Spotify, but again, you won't hear a difference.

Full disclosure, I used to do all that stuff. EAC from CD to FLAC, spent countless hours organizing and reorganizing. What a waste a time, but aren't all hobbies essentially?

 

Glad this question came up because I am looking into the same sort of options. I am currently trying out a trial of YouTube Premium which includes YouTube Music for "free", and that seems like the best deal. You do not know happiness until you get to watch YouTube with no ads!! I already store my music (and videos) in Google Drive so I can access them all that way.

However Apple Music is nice because its so simple and works seamlessly with iPhones and CarPlay. What has always kept me away from iTunes use on my phone is the fact that Apple charges outrageous amounts of money for iCloud storage beyond the small amount you get for free. I don't even have a large music collection but its well over 50GB or so and growing, I don't have that much space on my phone, so I would need iCloud space for the rest of it.

So if you subscribe to Apple Music do they give you space for your library in the cloud for free, included in that price? Or am I paying for the streaming service as well as the space to store my own music? With Google, they also charge for cloud storage, but its super cheap compared to iCloud.

 

There are no iCloud storage requirements for Apple Music, you get the entire library for $10/month. You can download whatever you want to any of your authorized devices in lossless format, to avoid data streaming charges in the car (or to ensure you have music when you're in the back country mountain roads). The days of ripping and uploading to iCloud Storage are gone when using an Apple Music subscription.

 

It is a long process to rip a ton of CDs, but the tagging can be done automatically through the ripping tools. I personally used "Exact Audio Copy" to rip high quality files, and it will connect with a CD Database (think there are free and paid options) to get album, artist, track information and such (some even lyrics) that it will store with the file as well as allow you to use in the file name/directory structure. Plenty of other software that does similar things, that was just the one I liked best 10 years or so ago when I converted, so the tagging and organizing doesn't need to be manual.

 

I had the same problem and all my flash drives wouldn't work on my C8. They played on my C7 and all my other cars. The reason was they were not in an MP3 format. So I converted some to MP3 and they're fine. But was it a big pain in the ***? Yes!

 

If quality is an issue for you, there are other options for ripping CDs.

When ripping into Apple Music (the desktop app) for example, you can choose other formats besides MP3. There is Apple Lossless, AAC, AIFF and WAV. You can also increase the bitrate from 128kbps (standard) to 160 or 192. I'm sure other software has similar settings.

I'm not sure what formats will work in your Corvette when playing through a USB stick. If you are using CarPlay, any of them will work through the iPhone music app.

I can only speak from an Apple perspective, but the process is very simple. Just put a CD in the drive. Apple Music will recognize as a music CD and look up details in a database. One click and you are ripping it into your system, with various details and album art. Once done, simply go to your music library (you can also right-click on a song and select "show in Finder"). All your songs will be there, organized into folders. Copy those folders to a USB stick and you are set (or sync your phone and use CarPlay).

 

I know I can just stream from their catalog for free, but what if I want to upload my own music (in iTunes now) to the cloud to listen to anywhere? Don’t I need to pay for iCloud storage for that?

 

That's a separate offering, called iTunes Match. I believe the subscription cost is there as an alternative to paying for iCloud storage.

 

That's what I was thinki of, thanks! Very interesting, I had no idea that service existed. Of course, this being Apple, the don't mention the price of this subscription so I did a little digging. It's $25/yr, and is completely separate from the streaming service of $10/mo.

Apple Music vs iTunes Match: What's the difference? | iMore

So if you have your own music collection you already own and just want to catalog it and listen to it anywhere on any device, you can pay $25/yr to have that ability without paying the $10/mo. Or of course you can do both.. either way, that's pretty cool and I would consider that a reasonable price for the convenience as well. I also think this may be more inline with what the OP was asking about.

UPDATE: After reading my own link a little more in depth, it appears that iTunes Match functionality is already built into the Apple Music streaming option. So you don't need to do both, you just have the $25/yr option if you don't want to have the ability to stream content you don't already own. So it is a nice option that they offer. Also, looks like either way, your music library does not count towards iCloud storage, so no extra storage charges ever apply to music, only to photos. Win win for Apple... I am now going to sych my iTunes music to all my devices.

 

rip them to flac which is lossless and it will play back with the same quality of the cd source

 

I don't have a c8 yet but he c7 is noiser then the c8 and yes you can hear the difference I use amazon music to stream in hd ultra hd
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