External CD Player

[stoopid]

Foobar2000 is a great player for FLAC and any other media files you wish that is a windows program. It will also rip CDs.

I've been using foobar for years, great app.

FLAC retains more detail, but IMO most people would be fine with 320kbps MP3 or higher variable bitrate (VBR) MP3s. I use high bitrate MP3s exclusively in the car, and I'm a bit of an audiophool.

I still actively buy CDs of new material and have even recently gone back and purchased some favorite albums on CD. They can take away my streaming service, but they can't (easily) take away my physical media. In all seriousness, there's always the risk one day in a purely digital streaming world they will set the cost of access to whatever they want [puts on tinfoil hat].

Like you (will inevitably) I transitioned several years ago from CDs to MP3 and FLAC in the car, no regrets. You can still have CDs if that suits you, but for convenience and quantity of material available there's no beating digital files (and yes, streaming). My favorite albums are ripped to FLAC at home, less frequently played music stored as MP3. The only physical media I handle anymore on a frequent basis are the surround discs I own.

 

[LordShadow]

Nothing beats a well mastered CD for pure listening pleasure. Got the chance to listen to some surround SACDs on a Cambridge CD Transport unit through a Rotel head and Paradigm drivers and it was heavenly!
Most of my collection is FLAC now for my favorites. After a junkie broke into my house years back and stole over 500 discs, I went mostly digital.
Definitely something to be said for having a week straight of music on a tiny USB stick and not lugging my CD suitcases around.

 

[JMB]

CD players and 8-tracks are almost the same things these days. I still have 200 CDs gathering dust in my closet, but I just Spotify up and stream whatever I want to play. It is so much less complicated than having a giant book of CDs in ,the car.

Hey guy CDs are so far ahead of 8 track which is even worse than Cassette. I know cause I had an auto shop for audio long ago and still follow everything. CDs are absolutely the finest reproduction you can buy anywhere except for a brand new record which will over time disintegrate. The frequency spectrum is unmatched especially in the car IF you can keep the skipping down!!!

 

[JSolo]

Rip to wav/flac, save on usb flash drive. How is this different from playing from a cd... minus the skips and pauses.

 

[Landshark]

i cringe thinking back to the days of giant books of CD's and CD changers in cars.

there's 180Gb of music (almost my whole music collection, minus stuff i don't care to listen to in the car) on my phone. i'm able to tweak the sound to my liking with Poweramp's 20 band EQ, and hit shuffle and it plays all the music i like, not what some streaming service thinks i might like. playlists for wife, roadtrips, etc.

i'm very picky about audio and 320kbps MP3's work fine for me ... a car is a noisy, crappy place to listen to music anyway.