I have a flash drive with about 20-30 CD’s worth of music (FLAC, and high-bit rate MP3). that plugs into a USB port. It’s much more convenient. You don’t have to worry about storing or scratching CDs. Even if the flash drive fails you still have backup files on your computer ready to go, there’s lot’s of redundancy. And you don’t have to change discs if you want to listen to something different. There’s no real downside to it that I can see. My Mustang has CD player that I’ve never used, my F-150 just has USB ports. You can pick up a 64GB flash drive for around $15 these days and enough space for around 75 CD’s worth of uncompressed music or around 150-200 CD’s worth if you encode with a lossless format.
Also, given typical road and engine noise I’ve never found the MP3 format to be wanting. I typically convert my CDs at home using the lowest compression possible. On a home audio system there would be a difference, but not on I-40.
We’ve lost something in automotive sound systems. The best sound was in the 1947 DeSoto coupe that my parents let me drive in high school. It had the original equipment Motorola AM radio with an 8" speaker facing outward from the dashboard. It didn’t have a CD player with compact disks that had to be changed. I didn’t have to rip my favourite recordings to a flash drive for the USB port. I would simply tune in Randy’s Record Shop out of Nashville, TN. and let Randy play the latest hits for me. The old DeSoto had a bench seat and the tiptoe shift “lift and clunk” transmission. With Little Iodine right next to me with my arm around her, I didn’t have to concern myself with shifting gears, putting in another CD, or making a flash drive with our favourite tunes.
Mike, there are several lossless formats for ripping CDs that result in no loss of information, including FLAC. You can google ‘lossless compression’ for more info.
Again, I’m afraid this simply isn’t true. FLAC can have a wide range of sampling rates (and thus bit rates), including the same 44.1 kHz sampling rate used for PCM format on a CD.
As you seem to have misconceptions on FLAC format, I’ll point out that you could rip to WAV format instead. That is bit-for-bit identical to the data on the CD without any compression.
My '02 Outback was one of the few makes that came from the factory with a McIntosh audio system, and it produced better-quality sound than most people’s home audio systems. Unfortunately, Subaru no longer has any McIntosh systems available, and I had to settle for a Harman-Kardon audio system in my 2011 Outback. It’s good, but it can’t hold a candle to that McIntosh system.
@VDCdriver. When we are traveling, we rarely turn on the audio system. I am so used to playing in bands and orchestras, that neither home nor vehicle systems sound natural to me. As the principal horn, I have trained my ears to listen to the other sections. The two concert bands and chamber orchestra where I play give concerts in different venues from an echo chamber church sanctuary to an acoustically dead high school auditorium. As an ensemble, we are constantly having to adapt.
I do think that the audio system in the minivans I have owned sound better than the systems in most sedans. Perhaps there is more space for the sound to reverberate. Our 2017 Sienna does have a CD player. It’s adequate for as little as we use the system.
In order to play CDs in my new car, I have a Walkman type CD player input into a little radio device. I then tune my FM radio to the appropriate frequency. It’s cheap and not bad.
The output of the compressed file is bit-for-bit identical as an uncompressed file. The in this context the bit-rate is not indicative of sound quality. There’s “lossy” compression (MP3) and there’s “lossless” (FLAC). With any kind of compression you’re going to have less bit-rate as the file is going to be smaller. With MP3 or other lossy compression, bit-rate was an indicator of the likely sound quality you were going to get (there are other factors like the quality of the source material), however with lossless compression, it doesn’t mean much other than a means to gauge how big of a file you’re going to end up with.
If a CD player was even an option for your vehicle, a Toyota unit, likely a replacement for the entire head unit, would be obscenely expensive. An aftermarket solution is the only sensible way to go, either a head unit or a stand-alone portable player with either Bluetooth or aux-in input to your OE stereo.