[l72]

A friend in his 40s had a 90s birthday party so I burned some mix CDs as party favors.

Those CDrs were 20 years old and have been sitting in a hot, humid attic for the last 10+ years, but still recorded fine.

The real problem was almost no one had a CD player not even in their car!

Also, I don’t think k3b or any of the other software i tried has been updated since 2005, but it all still worked great!

Most importantly, one of my friends brought it home and his 8 year old was so intrigued by it she came over and we burned a bunch of mix cds for her and her friends! I have no idea if her friends had anyway to play them, but she enjoyed making hand made cover art for each friend.

When I was in the attic looking for blank cds I came across a few other spindles of burned cds. Both mixes from my formative years and a bunch my wife had kept. Those times were magical and I few like kids have missed out.

[mbs159]

> The real problem was almost no one had a CD player not even in their car!

That's wild. Popping in a CD is part of the road trip experience!

[w4der]

I remember the frustration of hitting a washboarded dirt road and the CD jumping around and messing playback.

[piskov]

However if you’ve tried to read those cd-rw after 20-30 years, they would most likely be corrupted.

Factory stampted cds are better in this regard

[kevstev]

So I actually had a use case for this last month. My NAS is too weak to run immich well, so I dusted off my old sandybridge core i7 laptop from ~2011, and it actually benchmarks about 4x my nas, and has 8GB of RAM. But it was still loaded with windows. Long story short, its actually kind of difficult these days to install linux on such an old box, distros have become massive. I searched around in my closet and found my old spindle of burned CDs- and I wanted to go on a nostalgia trip, and every one I tried worked! I used Kodak Golds, which have lived up to their hype.

I even burned a CD of the smallest ubuntu distro I could find, and its happily running linux and hosting Immich, among other things.

[asciimov]

Factory stamps are still not immune to bit rot, even when stored in ideal conditions.

[xienze]

Maybe not, but I think the concerns are a bit overblown. Just like the other poster, I've had CDs and DVDs that lived for over 10 years in an attic and a fair number of them are 25+ years old. No problems reading them!

[asciimov]

Nearly a decade ago I digitized my families cds and dvds. The stamped discs had about a 10% failure rate, which was higher than I expected.

Fortunately the vast majority of discs people own aren’t particularly rare, so if they loose a disc from a top 40 artist, they can easily get a replacement.

[m463]

> Factory stamped cds are better in this regard

One thing factory CDs don't do well is spin. I think they were probably balanced good enough for 1x, but trying to rip some of them at 48x is noisy and feels close to explosive deconstruction.

[shimman]

Is there a reason why or is it just the quality of the materials?

[xattt]

Stamped = Data pits are a physical, unalterable thing on the disc. CD-R = Pits are still physical, but they are on a die layer that can fade. Some discs are more resilient (blue, gold) than others (cyan). CD-RW = Pits are (mostly) bistable for practical purposes, but will degrade to a neutral state on a long-term basis.

[bityard]

"Unalterable" is a matter of some debate... The physical pits and lands are on a super thin layer of aluminum. Ideally, this is protected with a laquer coating, but a lot of CD manufacturers in the 90s and 00s skimped on this to save money. I owned a lot of CDs where the coating didn't hold up over time and the aluminum just sort of flaked off, or became damaged/scratched easier than they should have with normal handling.

[kalleboo]

CD-Rs use an organic dye which fades (or in the worst case the bonds holding it on can delaminate).

They hold up much better if stored in a dark place. A spindle on a shelf that sees sunlight is the worst case and they can become unreadable in years.

[grishka]

Also don't CD-Rs need a more sensitive detector in the drive to read? I remember seeing somewhere that early drives have trouble with them

[ssl-3]

I remember reading about drives/players that wouldn't read CD-R, but I've never encountered one in the wild.

Anecdotally, every time I've tried: A burned CD that works well with one reader works with all others.

It was a hobby of mine at that time. I tried a lot of combinations: I was working at a local hifi shop where we had all kinds of stuff rolling through to play around with.

[Dylan16807]

But the above comment said CD-RW? Those are a crystal.

[kalleboo]

I assumed it was a typo since the topic was burning mixtape discs for folks and I've never heard of anyone giving out CD-RWs like that

[throw0101d]

> The real problem was almost no one had a CD player not even in their car!

And here I am driving a 2003 Golf with a tape deck (and CD player).

[q7xvh97o2pDhNrh]

> And here I am driving a 2003 Golf with a tape deck (and CD player).

That sounds wonderful.

There was a brief, magical moment in history when cars would come with AM/FM radio, a tape deck, a CD player, and an aux port so that you could plug in audio from every other device that humanity would invent for the rest of time.

It feels like the most fleeting of moments, and it was so long ago. Maybe it was just one summer afternoon in the early 2000s.

Anyway, I think we've largely been going downhill since then. For whatever reason, humanity achieved a lovely little peak of engineering, and then we immediately abandoned it for worse options.

[dylan604]

Don't forget the adapters that plugged into the 1/8" jack on your Sony WalkMan with a cassette shaped adapter that went into the tape deck. There are also those weird devices that plugged into the 1/8" jack with a low power radio transmitter to tune your in dash receiver to hear. (A local station I listen is on the low end where these devices operate. The station is lower powered college station with the transmitter located where I'm pretty close to the edge of its range. From time to time at stop lights, a stronger signal will come in to interrupt and disappears after the green and cars separate. I'm guessing one of these is being used)

[_jackdk_]

Perhaps coincidentally, it was also around the same brief beautiful moment in time where one could talk with all of one's friends using a single messaging client, possibly even over federated XMPP.

[thaumasiotes]

I had a car with just a tape deck. This turns out to be all you want.

I went through two phases:

1. I ordered some type of Walkman-like car kit that came with a portable CD player, glue strips to adhere the CD player to your dashboard, and a cassette tape adapter that plugged into an aux port (on the CD player) and inserted into the tape deck. I'd burn CDs to play in the car that way.

2. I got a Zen Stone, a tiny mp3 player with no screen that was easy to operate by feel. I stored mp3s on it... and plugged the cassette adapter that I still had into it. That was as good as in-car music can get without being voice operated.

They still make the adapters: https://www.amazon.com/Arsvita-Audio-Cassette-Adapter-Auxill...

[mc3301]

I had that PLUS a mini-disc player, all stock on a dirt-cheap car.

[criddell]

When I was buying my last car, I was searching for something with a CD player option. Turns out there are no new cars with CD players and the last manufacturer to offer one was Lexus in 2022.

I ripped my collection to my phone and I use CarPlay and it works well enough. But still if I could, I'd buy a car with a CD player.

My next car might be a Slate truck because they supposedly support single or double DIN radios and there has to be an aftermarket option that would work.

[imp0cat]

If you could go back in time and show your younger self Spotify streamed wirelessly from a phone via AA/AC, now that would be magical. Pretty much endless amount of music delivered instantly.

But I understand that it is a different kind of magic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-kqUkZnDcM (VW Cabrion Pink Moon ad)

[throw0101d]

> But I understand that it is a different kind of magic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-kqUkZnDcM (VW Cabrion Pink Moon ad)

I also found the 'night drive' ad to be interesting:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5U9I7QrpSkk

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Under_Milk_Wood

* https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0608221h.html

[bigstrat2003]

My younger self wouldn't be interested in endless music any more than my current self is. It's pretty rare that I discover a new band I want to listen to; otherwise I listen to the same music I already like and have.

[kleiba2]

> > And here I am driving a 2003 Golf with a tape deck (and CD player).

> That sounds wonderful.

I don't know if people are really serious but there seems to be a good market interest in car's that's not just equipped with touchscreens and Apple CarPlay. It's interesting (and perhaps understandable) how no car manufacturing is interested in tapping into such a niche segment.

[BuyMyBitcoins]

I remember being blown away seeing one of those tape-deck to aux cable players for the first time. Plugging my late 2000’s era iPod into my early 90’s car was magical.

[throw0101d]

> That sounds wonderful.

Except that rust is eating it and I'll have to replace it soon-ish.

[idiotsecant]

I donno Bluetooth is pretty universal now

[dylan604]

"For whatever reason, humanity achieved a lovely little peak of engineering, and then we immediately abandoned it for worse options." <=> "I donno Bluetooth is pretty universal now"

Your comment does not disagree with GP's in the way you think it does

[idiotsecant]

I guess what I'm saying is 27 different media players duct taped together does not seem like the peak of engineering. A single wireless protocol seems pretty good.

[dylan604]

Back in the day, we'd rate ourselves by how many dongles we'd string together to get things to work.

[mbs159]

A single protocol seems to be very limited, especially if your collection of music is purely physical, and for a lot of people it is

[ssl-3]

It's been over 20 years, and Bluetooth audio still usually sounds bad, still evades troubleshooting when it is working suboptimally, and increasingly drops out in some areas as interference increases.

I've never had any of those issues with a short piece of wire operating at audio frequencies.

[netsharc]

My car reads USB sticks with MP3s on them (I was telling a Gen-Z colleague this and felt old...). There are external BluRay drives that connect via USB, but then to he able to play audio CDs, either the car needs to understand CDDA, or the drive needs to understand CDDA and pretend to be a FAT32 filesystem of some MP3s (or... WAVs?) to the car.

Huh I also have Subsonic on my home NAS and Symfonium on my phone (connectable via Android Auto). Another Rube Goldberg invention would be to put the audio CD in the drive connected to the NAS, have a driver that pretends to be a filesystem of MP3s but actually encodes the CD tracks (on the fly on every playback, of course!), stream it over the Internet to my phone, that's connected to Android Auto. That's how to play a CD on a modern car!

[jonhohle]

There was a short period where CD players with Bluetooth and FM transmitters were made. Pairing is weird and may not work with every vehicle, but FM fallback is, well, as bad as it always has been.

I really like CDs and enjoy buying them second hand when on road trips. It was fun to put in something new while traveling, but now it requires an extra device on the off chance that a CD is found.

[TacticalCoder]

> ... stream it over the Internet to my phone, that's connected to Android Auto. That's how to play a CD on a modern car!

Sadly when you stream music over Bluetooth there is lossy compression taking place.

People can bitch all they want about "320 kbps mp3 using a modern encoder being indistinguishable from the lossless source", the fact is: mp3 were nice 30 years ago in the Napster day (when I had my ADSL Internet connection).

It's 2026 and I play lossless music, including FLAC files I bit-perfectly ripped from my own CD collection (and the rips have been verified online with a DB of rips, so I now they're bit-perfect) and including lossless music from proper music streaming platform (I pay a Qobuz subscription: amazing quality, huge offering, but shittiest music discovery platform ever btw).

Really: it's 2026 and if people like to listen to lossy music, more power to them. I don't, and hence I don't stream audio over Bluetooth.

My car both takes CDs, memory sticks (mp3 and WAV, no FLAC) and has got its own memory. I've got a few hundred songs stored in the car: they go losslessly to the car's DAC.

High-end luxury car and it's the type of car where people who've never been in one say: "I never knew music could sound that good in a car" (which btw is funny to witness when some car youtubers try a car with an amazing soundsystem).

Now of course it's still a car. Don't get me started on home stereo because I've got that too (and when you know what you're doing you can get amazing audio for a really very reasonable price: for example I won't put 30 K in a McIntosh amp where a Yamaha amp costing 1/30th of the price will do).

Call me an audiofool and... Enjoy your lossy Bluetooth streaming adding a layer of lossyness on your already lossy mp3 on your car stereo system which sounds like crap anyway.

[neckro23]

The layering of compression really does get you. I've noticed (both in "Plexamp in my car" and "playing music on Twitch" contexts) that using a FLAC source makes an audible difference, even compared to a high-bitrate MP3 source.

This might seem pretty obvious, but I wasn't expecting it to matter as much since the end result was compressed again (and yet again on my car's Bluetooth) using a different codec.

This isn't on anything close to audiophile gear either. My car stereo is thoroughly mediocre and my home stereo is speakers I literally found in the trash.

Now I'm (belatedly) rebuilding my music collection in FLAC...

[999900000999]

Apple has ruined audio for a generation.

I have a budget android phone with a jack and it's miles more convenient than a dongle or Bluetooth headphones which are never comfortable to me.

Nothing could sell a phone with a jack, but then you don't need to pay 300$ for some crappy Bluetooth headphones

[Kirby64]

> Nothing could sell a phone with a jack, but then you don't need to pay 300$ for some crappy Bluetooth headphones

Have you looked at the price of actually mediocre Bluetooth headphones recently? They’re like… $20 for a distinct fine set of true wireless headphones, including the case, even from a real brand. Certainly comparable to $20 wired headphones.

[prmoustache]

All <$100 bluetooth headphones sound like shit though while you can somehow get, not hifi quality but decent cabled ones for less than $50

[justsomehnguy]

$20 BT would get you a proper BT phonecall experience but they wouldn't give you a remotely good music playback at all. BT have a lot of codecs but a $20 headset including tax and markup would not include all the fancy ones by the cost alone.

[ColdStream]

Alas convenience wins for most people. They will take a loss in quality if it makes it a little easier.

I'm one of those people who cannot tell until the bit rate gets stupidly low or the encoder cannot handle the symbols on drums but that is no universal.

Even then I stick to headphone jacks when possible. If it is a low quality podcast, occasionally my $20 bluetooth buds come out but that is a reasonable trade off.

[throwway120385]

My truck will actually play MP3s off of a data CD. Maybe I should try that.

[ryandrake]

Nearly every automobile MP3 player (USB-based or CD-based) I've used was defective in some way. Usually something stupid like only playing tracks in alphabetical order, or inserting audible gaps between tracks that are meant to flow into one another, or not supporting tags correctly, or not handling UTF-8 text... Car companies don't know how to do consumer software.

[mc3301]

Mine would cut the last few second and first few seconds of each song with some terrible "meld together" business, like the world's worst DJ.

[andyjohnson0]

The system in my car (2018 Ford Fiesta) will play mp3s from a usb stick but, as with your experience, it has only a basic understanding of ID3. It completely ignores the "position in media set" tag, for example, meaning that it plays the 1st track from each cd in a set, then all the second tracks, etc.

I wrote [1] to post-process my (slightly obsessively) neatly tagged mp3 collection for use in my car.

[1] https://github.com/andyjohnson0/ID3Minimiser

Obligatory note: destructively edits tags, so run it on a copy of any mp3 files.

[andrew_lettuce]

This is what I do with my 18 minivan that has a 6 disc player. That's a lot of mp3s and it's fun to guess what's next (my rando mp3 discs tend to always be in alphabetical order

[justsomehnguy]

Hah!

Last year I bought a USB DVD RW drive just for the sake of it.

My 5.25" NEC 4xxx (with LightScribe) just quietly died in a PC used daily after around ~5 years of an extremely low usage. My only other ODD was in ThinkPad X301 and I had a feeling it would just die someday too most - and I would know it only when I would need read something.

So I just somewhat future-proofed myself a bit.

Number of discs I read on that drive is below 10 I think.

EDIT: oh, I helped out a friend to transfer some MRI records from a CDR with that drive. Somehow it was easier to send them from the other side of the country to a friend who would ask me to copy it and to send them back electronically.

[dieselgate]

I purchased a DVD player for the first time this past weekend.

[ColdStream]

It's the funniest thing with DVD and older consoles for that matter. For the first few minutes you can really sense the lower resolution but once you adjust it is perfectly fine. I am actually impressed with how well the image quality on some DVD's are considering it is a 30 year old format. Compare it to the likes of Bink or Sorenson codecs of the time and it looks amazing. Although I think a big part of that is just throwing stacks of bandwidth at the problem.

[2OEH8eoCRo0]

It's hard to buy people media now. You can't really gift people CDs, DVDs, or Blu-Rays because nobody has players anymore.

[kevincox]

A USB drive with FLAC files works pretty well. It doesn't have the same feel as a CD with art though.

For movies there isn't a legal way to acquire proper files unfortunately.

[tiborsaas]

It's safe to assume to buy them a player device too with the CD :)

[m463]

Send a player too. :)

[tayo42]

Game consoles play all of those.

For now I guess lol

[doublepg23]

Funny enough, neither the PS4 or PS5 support CDs. https://www.playstation.com/en-us/support/hardware/play-vide...

[kleiba2]

One of the hobby projects that I want to do, and hopefully will find the time for before we get rid of my wife's car, is to retrofit it with a CD player, powered by a Raspberry Pi or something alike. It could nicely live in the glove compartment and I believe the in-car entertainment system is already equipped with an aux port.

[grahamburger]

Ha, this reminded me-when I was a teenager I had an old beat-up car that didn't have a CD player or an AUX port. I also had an old boombox that had removable speakers. I removed the glove box from the car and, with the speakers removed, the boombox fit perfectly into the open space. I powered it with an inverter and used one of those old tapes that played from a headphone jack to connect the boombox to the car sound system. It sounded like dirt, and I got a strange look from a cop when I got pulled over and didn't have a glove box in which to keep my registration, but it worked!

[shimman]

Funny because the CD player in my car has been dead for like 16 years but the cassette player has never been better. Wonder why the cassette player lasted much longer, guessing the optical drive in the car is damaged because CDs will fail to read after like 10 second.

[6031769]

Do you drive over a lot of cattle grids?

CD players are precision items and don't take kindly to high impulse. Conversely, many tape decks are seriously robust. My dad had an old Grundig tape deck that was built like a tank (or a 380Z). Pretty sure whoever has that now is still getting quality sounds out of it.

[shimman]

Hmm, I've had for the car for 20 years (it's even older). Where I originally lived the roads were always smooth + paved well (also elevation was basically flat). Now that I'm in a city with actual hills (along with snow plows that ruin the roads), that's when the problems occurred. Seriously never seen so many potholes before in my life!

Not a cattle grid, but wouldn't have thought of the pothole angle without it.

[specproc]

I did the same for a friend's birthday recently: put together a bunch of mix CDs as a present. My concession to the fact he probably doesn't use a CD player much was a QR code, with a link to a matching Spotify playlist.

[MrDOS]

Two years ago, we sent CDs as our wedding invitations. We also received a lot of feedback to the effect that lots of our guests had difficulty finding a way to play the discs (including at least one person who was incredulous that the CD was real; but that might be because we sent vinyl-effect CDs).

I put a Spotify code[0] to the playlist on the back cover as a concession to streaming, but if anyone knew what it was and used it, they never told me.

[0]: https://www.spotifycodes.com/

[smelendez]

The most common CD players around now are probably video game consoles.

[ColdStream]

And even then I think it is only up to the 360/Ps3 generation. After that they only play DVD's/Blu Ray as it is a cheaper laser component.

[ssl-3]

All Xbox consoles can play audio CDs. (Later ones need software added to do that, but that software is free.)

Playstations after the PS3, though: Not so much. (Sony lost track of their "It Only Does Everything" schtick[1] somewhere along the way.)

[1]: https://blog.playstation.com/2009/08/27/it-only-does-everyth...

[account42]

Wait really? How much can the second laser possibly add to the BOM of a mass produced device? Now I'm wondering if there are also PC drives that cheap out like that - can't say I have tried a CD yet in the one I have right now.