Want CD player for new truck

[RoyF]

I'm excited about my 2021 Ford F350 diesel, but it has no CD player. I suppose that only old folks listen to CDs, but that's what we like to do.

I have the Lariat entertainment system with a USB input, but do NOT have SYNC. I'll see what my local automobile stereo store has, but I welcome a suggestion.

[Bobbo]

IF you get your CD working, let me know. I have an 8 track that I dearly love. 😉

[wa8yxm]

BobsYourUncle wrote:
I have a USB CD / DVD player I bought years ago for my PC.

My 2014 JEEP said "Media not recoginized" but when I popped an SD card in the slot.. Oh how it saw that straight off. and (I have been enjoying some great music as I drive ever since... Mix of a little bit of everything from Choir Practice (Sing along) to Blue Grass. to Folk and Filk (science fiction) to spoken word to classical to the Beatles happy birthday some symphonic Pink Floyd Christmas and more... If I don't hear Kingston Trio's "Ballad of the shape of things" I will copy my phone to that card

[ktmrfs]

Our vehicles all have a single disk CD player but we seldom use it. Easier to select from all our music via ipod or usb stick or car's internal hard drive

use I tunes to import your CDs to the computer, then you have at least options.
1) load them to a ipod and play in the car via bluetooth or USB
2) load them onto a USB drive and play

And some cars have internal hard drive to store music on. (our acura is one)

We have 500+ CD albums and I can easily fit all the music in MP3 format onto a USB stick, and can fit all of them barely on an ipod with max memory.

CD player in the car is relegated to playing books on tape on long trips.

[Gdetrailer]

schlep1967 wrote:
Google "cd player to usb for car". You should get a few options that will work for you.
I'm kind of in the same boat with some instructional DVD's I bought for doing maintenance on my motorcycle. Worked great until I bought a new laptop with no cd/dvd player.

That's an easy and low cost fix.

External Computer DVD drives for laptops, not a big problem, those are readily available and pretty in low cost at $20-$30.



AMAZON SEARCH

Plug and play, they get power from the USB port so no separate power supply needed and they are compact in size so very portable.

You just can't plug these players into a car stereo and have it play audio CDs.

Audio CD format is considerably different from MP3 or other computer digital media files. Your media player on a PC has the ability to read and interpret and play audio CD file format.

Your car stereo however is looking for MP3 or WMA computer music files and without something in between the external CD drive and the car stereo that can read and then translate audio CD formated files to a format and file structure the radio can use.

Not to mention CDs have a vastly different file system format structure all to it's own so it will not look the same as a USB memory stick.

A computer OS has the ability to read the CD file system.

[naturist]

iTunes will read in CDs as fast as you can feed them to the computer. Then copy them to a USB stick. No skips when you go over the railroad tracks.

No CD player is same complaint as no 8-track player. Ancient technology, no longer supported. Time to modernize the equipment.

[Gdetrailer]

BobsYourUncle wrote:
I have a USB CD / DVD player I bought years ago for my PC.

I wonder if that could be plugged in the the USB port on the factory stereo...
I haven't tried it, but if it works, it's a simple solution. The cable is only about 6 inches long, but there are USB extension cables.
It could be set anywhere convenient for you.

As far as I am aware, no, external USB computer CD players will not work unless something has drastically changed in the last couple of yrs.

I believe there may be a customized "firmware" that makes the mechanical player appear to the radio as a solid state flash drive basically fooling the radio into thinking that it is accessing a flash drive and not a mechanical drive. There are differences between how the two items work..

Found one HERE for $235 but it is very specific on the radio yrs that it will work with although it does mention that may work on SOME "aftermarket" radios..

" This Items will only fit 2019-2020 Compatible With Ford Expedition Compatible Radios 8" ONLY SYNC 3.0/3.3 will not work with extension cable
Adds a CD player to factory radios that do not have a CD player aka 'Mech-less Radios' , Install is Plug & Play - Just plug in the USB into your car's USB port. Can be mounted horizontally or vertically (Disc Slot Up) , Mounts with durable double sided tape
Control your music from the factory radio or steering wheel controls , Skip Protection Buffer, Single Disc CD Player , Powered via USB - Just mount it and plug it in
Can even work on some aftermarket radio brands , Powered via USB - Just mount it and plug it in
Width 5 5/8” , Depth 5 ¾” , Height 1 3/8” , USB Cable length 26” "

Found one HERE that claims 2019-2021 for $319 for 4" to 8" "MyFord Touch Sync3" 3.0 or higher. Might be the same as the other link, or the other link may be older firmware.. Your guess is as good as mine on that.

As for myself, I resigned myself to the fact that mechanical CD players are on life support, the last half dozen aftermarket radios I have bought with CD players in them did not last and often had trouble with playing many factory pressed CDs.

[APT]

If you are not willing to convert those to a digital portable format, I recommend paying to do the conversion and give you both the CDs and a USB Flash drive. There are companies/businesses that do this, but I expect many teenagers or college students would do it for a dollar a CD.

The benefit is portability and future uses. You can have your whole library on a keychain, or always keep it in that new truck and use the CDs at home.

[steveh27]

I have a 1997 Class B and it's Dodge radio had a cassette player that died. I had it fixed once and that didn't last long. My 2010 car has a cd player which may be on the blink. I too would like to replace the radio in the class B with one with a CD. But when I looked all of them had much smaller buttons and would make it harder for me to use while driving. I do take a portable sirius radio which is good, but I miss the CD player. It does not have any aux or USB inputs.

[schlep1967]

Google "cd player to usb for car". You should get a few options that will work for you.
I'm kind of in the same boat with some instructional DVD's I bought for doing maintenance on my motorcycle. Worked great until I bought a new laptop with no cd/dvd player.

[wa8yxm]

Another option I used to have a "Boombox" by Memorex. it was am/fm/CD and it came with a power brick.. GUESS What the output was on the brick (12 to 14 volts) Ran find off vehicle power.

[wnjj]

There are relatively cheap Bluetooth and FM transmitter portable CD players available:

https://www.amazon.com/cd-player-fm-transmitter/s?k=cd+player+fm+transmitter

[BobsYourUncle]

I have a USB CD / DVD player I bought years ago for my PC.

I wonder if that could be plugged in the the USB port on the factory stereo...
I haven't tried it, but if it works, it's a simple solution. The cable is only about 6 inches long, but there are USB extension cables.
It could be set anywhere convenient for you.

[Gdetrailer]

RoyF wrote:
I'm excited about my 2021 Ford F350 diesel, but it has no CD player. I suppose that only old folks listen to CDs, but that's what we like to do.

I have the Lariat entertainment system with a USB input, but do NOT have SYNC. I'll see what my local automobile stereo store has, but I welcome a suggestion.

CD players are pretty much extinct, hate to say it but it is true.

Very few OEMs offer CD and even the aftermarket radio market has pretty much sent them out to pasture and finding one limits your choices.

There was for a while a aftermarket CD player designed to plug right into Fords USB port, but it was very model specific and the unit cost well over $250! I think it was only offered for only certain 2019 Ford radio models, not sure if they are still in business..

Rip your CDs to MP3s and place the files on a USB flash drive, follow the basic rules I mentioned in my post above..

[Gdetrailer]

BFL13 wrote:


Note- a thumb drive is fine but you have no control over selection, skip and go back etc. If you just record from whatever playlist "they" have (like from Stingray) and don't like it all, just some of it. Plus it takes hours to do up a "play list" of only what you like, which could be better spent.

Another way is to get an older radio with a player from a junk yard and swap it in . 🙂

Your doing it all wrong if you have no "control" over the selection.

You do not need to build a "list" either.

The secret to making USB and MP3/WMA files play nicely is understanding how to properly setup the files.

Number one, don't dump all the files on the "root" of the drive.

Number two, create folders for your files, name folders in the order you want to play (hint, this goes in numerical and then alphabetical order).

If you do this correctly, the player will play the folders in order and the files in each folder in the alpha/numerical order.

For instance folder named with 1 will play before a folder named with A..

Same goes for your tracks..

To keep albums to play in the order of the CD you can name the files like AT1 through T10 and then the name of the song..

A for artist name or album name, T1-T10 is the track number.

And then you can add the song name.

Doing it that way the player will now play that in the proper order..

If you don't like all the songs in the album, just don't include them on the flash drive.

I name the folders by the album name and it will play them in alphabetical order.

You can easily make your own "mix tapes" by creating a custom folder and drop in your files, you may need to change the "T" numbers but overall it will play fine..

The beauty of this is you can carry hundreds of hrs worth of music on one single flash drive, it is like a huge "juke box" in your vehicle.

You do need to make sure your flash drive is formatted as "Fat32" file system which is default of drives smaller than 128GB.. Never tried 128GB drives in my radio yet but those typically will be formatted NTFS which may not be compatible with many car radios..

As far as getting "older radios from a junk yard" to work in newer vehicles..

GOOD LUCK at that, they are not "plug and play" any more, with newer vehicles the radio unit is highly integrated into the vehicle and removing it and replacing it with a different radio not specifically designed for that vehicle is a very expensive hassle..

I have a 2019 and 2020 F250s, and with those, the camera is integrated into the radio display, there is a very expensive aftermarket face plate and adapter system that sort of hodgepodges the camera in to a aftermarket system but it isn't perfect and you lose some features and functionality..

That is unlike our 2013 which was easy and cheap to toss an aftermarket radio in..

[BFL13]

I feel your pain! 😞

One way is a small watt inverter in the cig lighter to plug a CD player and a set of 2.1 speakers into, but there is no where to mount them and operate it all except the passenger seat. If DW along, the one in the passenger seat can be the operator.

Had Sirius radio briefly which somehow used the truck speakers. Didn't like their way of doing things. But there might be a clever way to still use your truck speakers instead of your own 2.1 set, don't know.

Note- a thumb drive is fine but you have no control over selection, skip and go back etc. If you just record from whatever playlist "they" have (like from Stingray) and don't like it all, just some of it. Plus it takes hours to do up a "play list" of only what you like, which could be better spent.

Another way is to get an older radio with a player from a junk yard and swap it in . 🙂