I bought a 2020 EcoBoost with a sync 3 system. I insisted that I have a CD player so the dealer install a unit that plugs into the USB port. Of course it doesn't work well or at all. Any suggestions of what I can install in place of the sync 3, so I can have a CD player, but maintain ,most of the functionality of the OEM radio. Thanks, Pete

 

Good luck with that. I prefer CD’s as well because you own the music instead of digital rights which can be taken away if you keep them on a cloud server. Also, most digital formats you can buy do not have high quality audio.

In car CD players are going the way of 8-track....solution, convert all your cd’s to mp3 then transfer them to a usb flash drive. The car stereo will be able to flip through the files and, if you convert them correctly, they will retain names that can be displayed on the stereo.

For conversion, you want 192kbps@24bit anything less and the audio quality will not be as good as the CD.

 

Thanks for the response. I've got a couple of hundred CDs how long would this take?

 

Yeah, I have a bunch of CD's also. I tried going down this route, burning music from CD's to I-Tunes. It is time consuming, and portability when you change devices (i.e. new computer or new phone) is problematic. I ended up spending the better part of a day uploading around 300-400 songs.

 

I had about 300-350 CD's. Took a few hours a day over the course of a 3-day weekend. Time consuming but worth it. At the time I used some software that came with a CD burner I had (this was back in 2011). It had access to Gracenote that would automatically fill in info for each music file that most MP3 players could read, including iTunes and my 08 Mustang Shaker system.

Do not use iTunes/Windows Media player. While they are convenient and just about everywhere, you end up with portability issues because of the DRM systems they use that not only requires the song file, but the permission file to listen to the music. You do not own the music that you convert with either of them and they can revoke your listening rights at any time. Plus the iTunes filing system is crap for use outside of iTunes, thus even more portability issues.

My suggestion these days is to check out different sites/reviews like this to see what may work for you. Most are freeware or opensource so they are free or being constantly updated to improve them.
https://samplerateconverter.com/educ...pping-software

Dbpoweramp and Winamp have been around for years so check them out. Dbpoweramp has access to a Meta database, this is similar to Gracenote for convenient file identification and naming information to be integrated into the ripped file.

While the ripper software may be free, you will most likely have to pay for Meta Database/Gracenote access. It's worth it, trust me. Make sure the ripping software you use is something you like before you pay for any database access. The license for access is only good for the ripper software you purchased it through. You cannot transfer the license from one ripping program to the next.

 

Thanks, I'm going to look into that software. You're right about Windows player, it took me 45 minutes to download 1 cd.

 

Speed of ripping does partially depend on the speed of the CD player being read from. If you're on a laptop, their CD players tend to have a lower RPM limit and thus transfer less data per second/minute to conserve battery power, even slower are the external ones that connect via USB.

The easiest way to see how "fast" your CD/DVD player burner is, is the Read Speed. This is usually annotated as Read Speed x24, x48, x52 etc. The higher the number, the faster it can read the CD which means at that poin,t the only bottleneck is the processor speed. This is oversimplified but is the easiest way to get an idea of how fast it will read and transfer data for ripping.

If you're on a laptop, keep it plugged in and turn the power profile to "performance mode", if you can, also turn off any type of power saver for the processor.

This is one reason I always have a desktop computer available with a full size cd/dvd burner. They will let you rip an entire CD in minutes. That and games on PC are just not the same on a laptop

 

Not to mention that finding a laptop with a CD/DVD is becoming increasingly difficult. With the improved high speed internet available in most locations, and the security concerns of inadvertently importing malware, it seems like most business laptops no longer have CD's at all. I have an external USB CD/DVD RW drive but it is painfully slow to use.

 

Thanks again. I'm using my desktop and I've ripped cds before and it went pretty quick.

 

there you go!