I appreciate my 2011 vehicle that only has a car radio with FM tuner and CDs, and yes, I know that I could easily swap it but I didn't on purpose, let me explain why:
- all the controls that I need, that are basically volume, radio station or CD track, are easily accessible trough physical buttons and knobs, that I can use without taking my eyes off the street
- I get in the car, insert the key and the radio turns on instantly and start playing music, no things that have to boot, no things that have to connect, etc. I usually listen to the radio and I stay up to date with news, listen to programs, listen to music without the need to create a playlist, or not and always listen to the same songs, or worse paying a subscription to just listen to music
- if I want to listen something different I can just put in a CD, and considering it supports mp3 CDs a CD can contain up to 100 songs without a noticeable loss in quality
- the UI of the radio in general is well designed, no useless functions, everything is easy to reach, no distractions. The radio is well integrated into the car dashboard, the design has something to say, not like a boring 10' tablet
- no distractions, notifications from my phone stay on my phone, calls don't pop up, simply when I arrive at destination I recall saying I was driving, or respond to the message
- finally, the sound quality is good, much better than most of integrated infotainment in modern cars that have 2000 useless functions, a shitty touchscreen, and a very poor sound quality. If I turn the volume all way up it shakes the car, the quality of analog FM radio is much better than modern digital radio that have the quality of a low bitrate MP3, and we are talking about the stock radio of a VW Golf 6, a normal car (when I bought it in 2011), not something fancy.
On the other hand, you are limited by having CD's which compared to streaming stuff from Spotify is much much less convenient, take up space and you need to create/buy them, your playlist don't synch up with your other devices. CD experience is much less streamlined than a smartphone. Perhaps nostalgia makes them seem cooler for you, but I am not sold.
Not GP. But a decade ago, my brother’s car didn’t have bluetooth. We burned down a few mixes on CD and that was ok for long trek during town. He replaced that unit but we still used those CD from time to time. It was simpler than deciding which phone to connect.
Even today, while I use spotify on my work computer, it’s basically the same albums every day (around a dozen). Playing CDs would be probably better than switching to the UX disaster that is Spotify
> Even today, while I use spotify on my work computer, it’s basically the same albums every day (around a dozen). Playing CDs would be probably better than switching to the UX disaster that is Spotify
Why don't you switch to CDs then? Something is telling me this isn't quite the full story.
I'm sure lots of people who don't really need to use Spotify use Spotify all the time, if you really do listen to just a few albums, why not buy those off Bandcamp/Beatport/Whatever then listen to those and stop paying Spotify? I'd easily switch away from Spotify if I no longer saw/agreed with the convenience, but hard to beat it for discovery right now.
The full story is that CDs have a physicality to them that can be somewhat inconvenient.
But the concept holds. I have a directory in a copyparty share that I stream music from constantly. It's probably 20 albums worth of music, and it's just in a mix that I put on almost every day, whether I'm driving or I'm working.
I tend to tune into livestreams on YouTube for the discovery aspect.
You can still buy dedicated music players with many gigabytes of storage. Leave that in the car plugged into the stereo. They are comparatively dirt cheap from what was available before streaming took over.
Whats even less convenient is opening up Spotify on a road trip to listen to some Sum 41, and finding out most of their catalog has been removed.
I agree that CDs have too much friction though. Theres no easy pathway from “I like this album” to listening in the car/stereo. Especially for someone who is constantly discovering music and keeping up with new releases from artists.
First of all, not all releases are even available on CD. Even if they were, I would be spending thousands of dollars per month for the amount of music I listen to. Not to mention the lead time from ordering CDs which could take a couple weeks or more to arrive. And then I can’t even listen in my new car anyway cause there’s no CD drive.
I like hi-res lossless audio files. I can load them up on a USB and plug it into the car. I don’t have to mess around with Bluetooth at all. It’s easier to get the music too. And it sounds better. And it can’t be taken away. And is cross platform. And its free!
Btw I like supporting artists, especially the less popular ones. If I like your stuff, Ill buy some merch. But thats after I have the music.
> And, I personally find the quality of YouTube Music Premium (256kbps AAC) superior to FM radio.
When it comes to playing music from phones in cars, connection type seems to matter more than the source, and iOS has some weird built-in sound normalization only for CarPlay that drives me crazy.
In my Audi A3 (2018), if I connect my iPhone 12 Mini via AUX or Bluetooth, sounds works perfectly fine. Same when playing via CD or USB stick inserted into the car, no problem. FM radio also works well, regardless of volume.
However, if I play music via CarPlay (Spotify [lossless], YouTube, on phone .flac files, etc) some built-in sound normalization seems to kick in and suddenly it ruins the music when playing even slightly louder.
I've tried for years to figure out what the hell is going on, tried every setting under the sun, but cannot get it to work so only thing left is some built-in sound ruinification ("normalization") that Apple does, only when played via CarPlay, not when playing via AUX or Bluetooth.
Seems to happen with every car I try it with, but I never tried a different phone. So right now I'm choosing between being able to have GPS or listen to music properly, as I cannot do both at the same time...
Maybe it’s trying to split the output into more than two audio channels when in CarPlay mode? If it were only Apple Music doing this I’d be sure this was triggering its Atmos output, not sure how it’d be affecting other players, but maybe.
Tried every conceivable player, Spotify, YouTube Music, YouTube, Apple Music (local files), Soundcloud and more, all of them leading to the same thing, via USB+CarPlay the sound get normalized somehow but if using AUX/Bluetooth, works normally.
> Maybe it’s trying to split the output into more than two audio channels when in CarPlay mode?
I hope so, most of what I play is stereo, and works fine via AUX/Bluetooth.
Hmmm. What other cars have you tried? I wonder if it’s the DSP path used for CarPlay. Or could it be the Audi system is clipping this source? I’d find it really surprising if Apple is doing something here.
> the radio turns on instantly and start playing music, no things that have to boot
Currently my bane with the smart TV I have. Takes so long to boot and to wake from sleep that I’d press the power button, go to make my coffee and then get back to it. Otherwise I’d be halfway through my breakfast when all I wanted to do is watch a few videos on Youtube.
Seconding this. Who knew that the time an old CRT took to warm up would seem like an instant compared to the boot time of a 75” flatscreen introduced 35 years later? :[
I’m in a similar situation, my car does have Bluetooth, but I mostly use cd’s and radio, the one thing I wish I had was a map in a convenient spot, I have to have my phone set up in some awkward holder to view it, I’m dependent on using the maps app on my phone
My 2012MY car has Bluetooth, but only for calls/interruptions not for music so I've been using USB sticks still. It has a navigation system but the map DVDs are so weirdly expensive that I have never updated the maps. I'm at the point where I don't always trust the nav system to get me somewhere and use my phone. I leave the car's map up if I want to glance at it to double check, but also assume some of the roads are wrong now. The biggest thing I miss is "next turn info" in the driver cluster, but the Apple Watch has a version of that. It's still less convenient to glance at my watch instead of the driver cluster, but still better than glancing at my phone or having to mount my phone somewhere.
CarPlay sounds fantastic but right now all the manufacturers I'm looking at for "next car" don't support it. I keep thinking if I never experience it first hand I'll not be disappointed if the "next car" doesn't have it. Bluetooth for music might be enough of an upgrade for me. It seems interesting to me this pendulum swing in "every car has CarPlay" to "manufacturers don't trust CarPlay" has happened within the time period of me owning a single car. It probably says something about the car life cycle.
Your comment got downvoted for being flippant but I agree. It's an interesting discussion but it really comes off as grandstanding. Doesn't address the main thrust of the article nor the comment to which it replies.
- all the controls that I need, that are basically volume, radio station or CD track, are easily accessible trough physical buttons and knobs, that I can use without taking my eyes off the street
- I get in the car, insert the key and the radio turns on instantly and start playing music, no things that have to boot, no things that have to connect, etc. I usually listen to the radio and I stay up to date with news, listen to programs, listen to music without the need to create a playlist, or not and always listen to the same songs, or worse paying a subscription to just listen to music
- if I want to listen something different I can just put in a CD, and considering it supports mp3 CDs a CD can contain up to 100 songs without a noticeable loss in quality
- the UI of the radio in general is well designed, no useless functions, everything is easy to reach, no distractions. The radio is well integrated into the car dashboard, the design has something to say, not like a boring 10' tablet
- no distractions, notifications from my phone stay on my phone, calls don't pop up, simply when I arrive at destination I recall saying I was driving, or respond to the message
- finally, the sound quality is good, much better than most of integrated infotainment in modern cars that have 2000 useless functions, a shitty touchscreen, and a very poor sound quality. If I turn the volume all way up it shakes the car, the quality of analog FM radio is much better than modern digital radio that have the quality of a low bitrate MP3, and we are talking about the stock radio of a VW Golf 6, a normal car (when I bought it in 2011), not something fancy.