Question Playing my CD collection on my car's new audio system ?

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jhsachs

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Apr 10, 2009
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I just replaced my old car's CD player with a new one that has a USB port instead. I'm faced with the problem of moving my rather substantial CD collection to a form that the audio system can play.

The solution seems to be to rip the CDs and store the files in directories on a flash drive. It's simple in principle but I'm not looking forward to feeding a couple of hundred CDs into a computer's CD drive one at a time.

Is there a better way to do this? I'd be willing to send my CDs to a service that rips them for me. I'd be reluctant to spend several hundred dollars for a piece of hardware that makes it easier to do myself, assuming such a thing exists. I wouldn't have any use for the thing after I finished this one task.
 
one at a time is the way it'll be no matter who does it. at one point or another most of us have had to go through the process and it's as fun as you expect it to be :)

keep in mind everything works off the mp3 tag. so be sure as you go it is as you want. correct song title, album title, genre and so on as this is what is read by the system. most ripping software will pull the info from the web as it goes but double check before clicking go on each disk. having to go back and edit hundreds/thousands of files is even less fun than ripping them in the first place.

does not matter what the file itself is named so don't be fooled by that. figure out how you want to organize it before you start as well. again moving thousands of songs around after the fact is a nightmare as well. decide if you want to go by genre, decade, artist name or whatever. re-evaluate after a bit in case you want to change up before you get too far into it.

think about how you'll want to listen to it and be sure you tag it accordingly. for instance if you want to be able to select all of one style be sure you can easily. tag it with the same genre so you can just select it all at once easily. often it'll tag the artist as "john featuring bob" "john featuring sam"" john featuring sarah, sam and bob" and so on for one album. this makes selecting a single artist to play as impossible as the system thinks every song is a new artist.

so tag it all as the artist, then put the "featuring _____" part elsewhere in the description if needed.

work carefully and meaningfully and it'll be easy to do. try to do it as fast as possible and you'll leave yourself with a nightmare to work with.

good luck :)
 
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jhsachs said:
I just replaced my old car's CD player with a new one that has a USB port instead. I'm faced with the problem of moving my rather substantial CD collection to a form that the audio system can play.

The solution seems to be to rip the CDs and store the files in directories on a flash drive. It's simple in principle but I'm not looking forward to feeding a couple of hundred CDs into a computer's CD drive one at a time.

Is there a better way to do this? I'd be willing to send my CDs to a service that rips them for me. I'd be reluctant to spend several hundred dollars for a piece of hardware that makes it easier to do myself, assuming such a thing exists. I wouldn't have any use for the thing after I finished this one task.
Click to expand...
An external CD drive to do this would be $25 max.
Add a $10 flash drive (64/128GB) to transfer to the car.
The only other thing is it will take is time.
 
Think of it as a long term project.

200 CDs; that's ripping 1 CD a day for 7 months. Presumably in order of most importance to you. Ripped to WAV or MP3. Originals kept on a hard drive and copied to a USB flash drive for car playback as you see fit. Don't even think about leaving yourself without any of them on a hard drive and then backed up to at least one other hard drive.

Your playback habits matter.

Are you the type that wants to listen to an entire CD, track for track as originally released on the retail CD?

Or are you the type that really only likes a couple of songs on a given CD and would prefer to listen to 1 song each by Dylan, Presley, Sinatra, and whoever, back to back. Maybe in random order.

At one time, I had 15,000 MP3s on a single USB stick for car playback, all in a single folder playing in random order. I gave up on that and reduced the total to about 1800 because with 15,000 I could easily go an hour without hearing a real favorite. But the 15,000 remain on multiple hard drives. The 1800 is very slowly rotated as I identify "new favorites".

Regardless, get one of those "mini" USB sticks. If you get a full-length stick, it's only a matter of time before you accidentally wack it with your hand as it hangs out of the port. Any speed will work, even 2.0. Format it correctly. Figure 200 to 300 songs per gigabyte on average. Subdivided on the USB stick as you see fit.

You might get in a bind if you have a lot of subfolders, which can be difficult to navigate as you are hurtling down the road at 65 mph while fishing for the tiny controls on your car player. That's a primary reason why I use only 1 folder.
 
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Lafong said:
Regardless, get one of those "mini" USB sticks. If you get a full-length stick, it's only a matter of time before you accidentally wack it with your hand as it hangs out of the port.
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I discovered that my car has onboard storage.
Don't know the extent of it, but at least 64GB. I have about 1/2 of my current collection stored...in the car.
I need to finish digitizing my vinyl collection.
 
USAFRet said:
I need to finish digitizing my vinyl collection.
Click to expand...

I had that in mind myself at one time.

I was intimidated by my collection of 6000 LPs plus thousands of 45s and 78s. And a few hundred CDs. They are all still sitting here in "storage", probably for the duration.

But I gave up on the idea 20 years ago and glad I did. Fact is:

1; I don't care to ever again hear perhaps 80 percent of the songs in my 45/78/LP/CD collection. You like 2 or 3 songs on this LP and maybe you won't miss anything at all on the next LP. Lots of unnecessary "filler" on virtually all of them.

2; the beauty of digital files is that you can keep ONLY individual songs if you want...and never again hear the unwanted. All it takes is 5 seconds of listening and then reach for the DELETE key.

And I now have 35,000 mp3s...many of which I had NO chance of ever hearing through non-mp3 means and all of which I like one extent or another.

I have not used a turntable or CD player in 15 years.
 
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Thank you both for very thoughtful and helpful posts. They made additional questions occur to me.

I was surprised and relieved to learn that audio media may have folders, but how does the car stereo navigate them? I don't know if there's a standard for that, or it's a question that I'll have to ask in my car's owner forum.

Organizing my music according to "how I'll want to listen to it" is hard, because there's no one way. One day I may appreciate finding a track by searching for "flute"; another day I may appreciate finding the same track by searching for "Faure." Another day I might want to start with a search for "French Impressionist composers." I need some way to index the tracks according to multiple types of keys. I don't know if that's even possible in the car. I'm sure it can be done on a computer at home, but I don't know how, except by hand.
 
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jhsachs said:
Thank you both for very thoughtful and helpful posts. They made additional questions occur to me.

I was surprised and relieved to learn that audio media may have folders, but how does the car stereo navigate them? I don't know if there's a standard for that, or it's a question that I'll have to ask in my car's owner forum.

Organizing my music according to "how I'll want to listen to it" is hard, because there's no one way. One day I may appreciate finding a track by searching for "flute"; another day I may appreciate finding the same track by searching for "Faure." Another day I might want to start with a search for "French Impressionist composers." I need some way to index the tracks according to multiple types of keys. I don't know if that's even possible in the car. I'm sure it can be done on a computer at home, but I don't know how, except by hand.
Click to expand...

I can't speak for your player and it's navigation capability.

Any player should have "random" playback functionality of some type.

Speaking for mine...it's a Pioneer brand:

It CAN use folders, but it will NOT automatically move between them. That's a manual job.

I'd have to change folders manually via the controls and could easily get myself and others killed if done while the car is in motion due to distraction.

I could put all my Johnny Cash mp3s in a Johnny Cash folder and then play everything in that folder in either random order or in order by file name. If I then wanted to hear Henry Mancini or Elvis, I'd have to manually navigate to some other folder.

I occasionally have made multiple USB sticks by genre: one containing ONLY blues, all in a single folder. Another containing ONLY rockabilly, all in a single folder. Etc, switching sticks when I grew tired of a genre. But I gave up on that because I like genre-jumping at random. Muddy Waters followed by Gabby Pahinui followed by Hank Williams, all in one folder.

You could of course consider multiple sticks like "1940s" or "Instrumental only" or "Female Hawaiian vocalists". Or those folders on the same stick...may God help you with the navigation and search function.

I like random rather than non-random numerical or alphabetical because you get tired of hearing stuff in the same order. "I Walk The Line" is playing and you already know that "Folsom Prison Blues" is the next song. Maybe you are OK with that. I'm not. I love the element of surprise..."what's next??"

If not set to random order, a standard alphabetical sort order is used. The file names "Johnny Cash - I Walk The Line" would play AFTER "Dean Martin - I Walk The Line" and BEFORE "Timi Yuro - I Walk The Line".

I don't use numbers at the beginning of file names. They are unnecessary for my purposes. You MIGHT want to use numbers if you want to hear CDs or LPs in a specific order as released on the original CD. "01 Elvis - Hound Dog" should play BEFORE "02 Elvis - Don't Be Cruel".

I outright do not do any searching with my car player. It's doable but it's beyond tedious, entirely aside from the distraction danger. I don't tag by anything other than file name, artist, and song title. I don't need a machine to tell me that Elvis is in the rock and roll genre or that "Mystery Train" was recorded in 1955 and appeared on such and such CD.

If you asked me to play "Mystery Train" within 1 minute, I'd be dead in the water...but I don't mind that at all.

You could of course name folders "flute stuff" or "French impressionist stuff" as you see fit. You could even put the very same recording in more than one folder so that you might hear Herbie Mann in both "flute stuff" and "Jazz Instrumentals".

I've said "folders" throughout this. Fact is, I don't use folders at all. Everything is dumped into the root of the drive. 1800 songs. I hear music in random play from the root within 3 seconds of starting the car. If I turn off the ignition at 44 seconds into a song, that's where playback begins on the next start-up.

You'll likely have to compromise in car playback. Experiment and be prepared to change stuff around as you come to conclusions.
 
Lafong said:
I've said "folders" throughout this. Fact is, I don't use folders at all. Everything is dumped into the root of the drive. 1800 songs. I hear music in random play from the root within 3 seconds of starting the car. If I turn off the ignition at 44 seconds into a song, that's where playback begins on the next start-up.
Click to expand...
I have 2 Volumes in my car. CarMusic and RandomCarMusic.
1 where each album is in its own folder or subfolder.
The other, where several thousand mp3s are in a single folder, for Random.
 
Additional note regarding car playback:

Glare in daylight hours is a MAJOR factor. The screen is typically all but unreadable before sundown at which point the display lighting becomes visible.

Cars have become fancy-dan in recent years. Maybe current era players have a daylight-readable screen 12 inches square. I have no idea.

Forget it if you are trying to read a traditional radio face at noon. Never mind navigation.
 
from what i have seen most cars can navigate a folder structure pretty well. as others have noted though they rarely move between them while playing.

this is why i suggest using genre or other attribute as a way to lump a bunch of stuff together. check out your car with a small sample and see what options it has. you may get multiple other descriptors so you can label multiple ways. but this would be rare from my experience.

at least genre's can lump a lot of stuff into one easily played list. most cars also can handle playlists. taking the time to make a bunch of playlists is also a way to get to a bunch of stuff all at once.

for instance i made one for instrumentals, one for soundtracks, one for stand up comedy, one for loud/fast/heavy stuff, one for sappy sing along love songs (don't judge me!!) and so on. since these will mix genres it's a way to get similar tunes if i want it.

i am also a mostly random player as well. i love never knowing what is next. a little whole new world from aladin followed by Gwar, followed by some good ol hank williams, followed by some swing music is the way i like it :)

so i'd just select "all songs" random and then let it do whatever.

you may also find that instead of the usb stick, you might get better/easier access using your phone or other mobile device. connect it either through BT or the 3.5mm jack that most cars have as an input now. i don't use the usb in my car but rather just hit play on my phone and let it stream to the stereo. i can navigate much quicker and easier on the phone than through the onboard screen.
 
Thanks again, the outlines of this feature are becoming clear.

It sounds like the car's search capabilities are going to be limited and impractical to use. I suspect my best solution is to keep the several thousand tracks on the computer, where I can index and search them to my heart's content, and periodically copy a few to a flash drive, depending on my current interests.

I was really baffled by the comment that most car audios can't move between folders automatically. It sounds like I'm tuning in on Episode 3, or else the playlist is skipping from Episode 2 to Episode 5. How in the world could a car audio change folders automatically, and why would I want it to? Unless it can read my mind and go to the folder I'm going to want next, it would just be disruptive.
 
jhsachs said:
I was really baffled by the comment that most car audios can't move between folders automatically. It sounds like I'm tuning in on Episode 3, or else the playlist is skipping from Episode 2 to Episode 5. How in the world could a car audio change folders automatically, and why would I want it to? Unless it can read my mind and go to the folder I'm going to want next, it would just be disruptive.
Click to expand...

I meant this, speaking only for the way my player works:

Suppose you are listening to song B, which sits in folder A.

If you are in random play mode, I don't think the next song is going to be from anywhere but folder A. The player won't "automatically" jump to another folder just because it is in random mode. It's random for the CURRENT folder only.

If you want to hear song C which is in folder D, you would have to manually switch to folder D.

In the ideal world, "random" play might utilize the ENTIRE stick rather than a single folder. But it won't do that UNLESS all the songs are in the root of the drive...not in a folder at all.

I'm NOT sure if the search function could even find song C in folder D if you are in folder A at the moment....it may be that the search function works on a folder basis only, rather than the entire USB stick. I don't use search, so am not positive about this. You may have to manually switch to folder D to find song C at all, let alone play it.
 
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I have literally thousands of CDs collected over the years ripped and in my Plex server. Then, I can simply use Plexamp/Android Auto and play in the car any time. Ripping isn't bad once you get into the rhythm, and you can put the physical discs into storage.
 
Switching between folders automatically does make sense in random play mode. I didn't think of that because I'm absolutely not a random play person.:)

But in an ideal world you'd want to be able to select the folder in/under which the random selection will pick. I don't know if there's any real car audio system that does that. If I were designing a feature-laden audio system, I'd do that.
 
jhsachs said:
I'm absolutely not a random play person.:)
Click to expand...
I guess that makes you a "specific order" person?

You could easily do that using a number of your choice before each file name. Non-random play would be strictly in numerical order, 01, 02, 03.

Your player probably has a button that will force the player to immediately go to the next song in the order with a single push. On demand.

"But in an ideal world you'd want to be able to select the folder in/under which the random selection will pick."...................You can do that today in this world. Manually select folder R and random play will play from R only.
 
worstalentscout said:
save a copy of the below 3 minute long track.............play it a couple times in your audio system every 1-2 weeks.........it will restore it's audio quality.............i've been using it since the late 1990s

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izl1XlLTI_w
Click to expand...
Snake Oil by any other name. Next you'll be telling everybody that they need the same braided oxygen free copper speaker cables that have been foisted on home audiophiles for years at staggeringly high prices.

Now show us the actual data that backs up your claim, with actual published papers (title and author required)
 
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