CD player problems

[KeilanS]

So are you wanting CD in your car or home? Most newer car CD's will play MP3 discs, but you have to check and make sure. I bought a Pioneer w/ detachable face at Wal-Mart for under $100 (on clearance) and it sounds pretty good. Honestly, I miss my cassette player that was in there; it's still sitting in the shed in case of the rare event I should sell the car. It was starting to eat tapes and act up (no, cleaning did no good), so I replaced it.

As far as home players go, I would actually go to Wal-Mart and buy a cheap DVD player if you're not looking for something portable. Most new DVD's will play CD's and MP3's both, so that's the way to go IMO.

I believer you misunderstood what we meant by MP3's. We wern't referring to MP3 discs (which are however excellent to look into, you can fit 150-200 songs on a single disc). We were talking about the portable MP3 players, the ones that don't even read discs and instead have internal memory that fits hundreds to thousands of songs.

[other one]

Neb, if you have the means, I'd suggest a sub-woofer, I love them

I just want to be able to listen to my CD's in my car!

Neb, mp3 is a compression format that will let you store much more informaiton on a standard cd. When you make CD's you can use the standard format or you can record it in the mp3 format and get about 10 hours of whatever on the CD instead of about 45 minutes. The mp3 players that they are talking about is basically a cd player only it has computer memory instead of a cd. My creative Zen has a 30 gigabite hard drive in it. I have a couple of thousand songs on it, including 5 complete Coast to Coast Am Radio shows (about 3 hours each) and there is still about 20 gigabites room on the player.

We just purchased a new car and the radio cd player will read and play mp3 files. A CD player has a small microprocessor computer in it that reads and turns the cd files into analog signals that our speakers let us here.

So, yes you can get a cd player for your car that will play mp3 files that you would record yourself. It takes a CD burner in your computer to do this. The latest releases of Microsoft Media player that comes with XP will do this for you. The radio instruction tell us not to use those small mp3 disks for their formatting is a bit different and the laser can destroy itself trying to set the focus and aligning itself to the disk. So you would need to burn your own cd with the mp3 files on it.

An alternative is something I did several years ago and that was to buy a small portable cd player that plays cd's in the mp3 format and attach it to a small fm transmitter that I got from radio shack and it lets me hear what is playing on cd player on my FM radio. I use it at home on my computer so I can roam the house with a little ear bud fm radio set and listen to things without bugging my wife...... really good for the radio talk shows I listen to a couple of days a week.

Either will work.

As for the one in your car that isn't working all the time, you might take a can of canned air and turn it upside down and blow the liquid in it directly into your cd player, then turn the can back around and keep spraying into it.... the super cold from that liquid becoming gas will freeze any moisture and using the gas by turning the can back right side up will melt the ice and move the excess moisture out of the player.. The liquid is a very good solvent and will clean any old grease out of the mechanical moving parts and clean it up a bit. I usually hold a vacuum cleaner on one corner of the slot the cd goes into to help remove any dust that the air sturrs up. We have a lot of them get messy like that on the Sun Microsystem servers we use at work and this has worked many times in the past for me. If you use the vacuum cleaner be sure to get non flamable air (it's not really air).

Sam

[KeilanS]

I think this is getting far more detailed then Neb wanted.

Go to an electronics store. Ask them for the cheapest car stereo that plays MP3 discs and doesn't suck and ask them what it would cost to get it installed.

Problem solved.

[billie]

Yeah, don't forget the doesn't suck part!

[KeilanS]

Yeah, don't forget the doesn't suck part!

Most important part

[other one]

Neb is a very smart young lady and she has usually seemed to want to understand things........ if so good if not she can ignore the details...... she's good at that too from all I can tell from reading her for the past three years or so....

[KeilanS]

Neb is a very smart young lady and she has usually seemed to want to understand things........ if so good if not she can ignore the details...... she's good at that too from all I can tell from reading her for the past three years or so....

Haha, in that case. A normal CD can hold 80 minutes worth of music Neb, (20 four-minute songs, give or take), however most artists only put about 12 on them. An MP3 CD (which is the same physically, it's just data that makes it different) is not measured in minutes. It holds 700MB of music. Which equates to VERY roughly a bit over 11 hours or 175 songs.

An MP3 player is not what you're looking for, they can play in cars but only with the right car stereo (which means you're buying the stereo anyways0.

[RGR]

Right, I collect 8-tracks and I love the multi-tape sets. I've gotten to where I love to put them on the computer as MP3 files and burn them off as one MP3 disc. Of course, using those same files, you can upload them to a portable device such as an iPod I understand. I haven't went portable in years, lol, so forgive me for not knowing the new technology!

[nebula]

I really am enjoying the information!

I guess I ought to have clarified the CD player.

It came with the car when I bought it from the previous owner (yeah, they let me keep it!); I don't know how old it is. The unit is a 6 CD player unit place in the trunk with wiring that runs to the stereo system in the car. I think the wires are buried in the paneling, so to replace the unit, I'd have to undo the panels and all that.

See my dilemma?

[KeilanS]

I really am enjoying the information!

I guess I ought to have clarified the CD player.

It came with the car when I bought it from the previous owner (yeah, they let me keep it!); I don't know how old it is. The unit is a 6 CD player unit place in the trunk with wiring that runs to the stereo system in the car. I think the wires are buried in the paneling, so to replace the unit, I'd have to undo the panels and all that.

See my dilemma?

You could probably get an electronics store to do all that for you... but it wouldn't be cheap.