Aftermarket head unit without a cd player?

[Klutch9]

Lately I've been looking for an aftermarket head unit for my Sedona. I really want an aux input/USB input, and don't feel like spending $100+ on the OEM cable and keystone jack. For roughly $50, I can get a cheap head unit, with dash surround clip and wire harness. What I'm really wondering is will I regret getting rid of the cd player? Has anyone done this and regretted it? The only cd I've ever played in the vehicle was about a year ago, because I couldn't connect my phone to the radio. Otherwise I'd have never used it.

And I do realize that if I spent like $25 more I could get one with a CD player, I just don't want to buy something I don't need. I pride myself on ditching legacy technology/simplifying... maybe it's time.

 

[RedOakRanch]

What is a CD?

 

[Andrew1972]

The downsides of a aftermarket unit is the typically hideous light at night and the tiny buttons/knobs/ease of use vs the OEM stuff.

In the <=$100 range they typically make the displays super ugly to catch your eye at the store.

 

[Jimzz]

Make sure what ever you get is a name brand.

But as long as it has a USB port I am fine. I can put hundreds of CDs on 1 small USB stick so why use CDs?

 

[Quattro Pete]

Originally Posted By: Klutch9
What I'm really wondering is will I regret getting rid of the cd player? Has anyone done this and regretted it?

Not really. If you have something on CD, you can always rip it to MP3 on your home computer and then put it on a USB stick.

 

[eljefino]

My BIL had $100s of original CDs jacked from his car. Yeah you could rip and burn copies, but that's so 2002.

 

[Klutch9]

Originally Posted By: madRiver
The downsides of a aftermarket unit is the typically hideous light at night and the tiny buttons/knobs/ease of use vs the OEM stuff.

In the


I actually found one, a Pyle unit, that has hardly any blingy lights, and 6 buttons side-by-side for the presets (like most OEMs have). Just bought it for $42 shipped, including all necessary hardware. It looks cheap, but it'll also blend in pretty well and not look obnoxious. The lack of many lights is a good thing, since I do a decent amount of night driving and often dim my display, and these aftermarket radios almost never dim along with the other lights.

I'll report back once I install it. Another plus is that this is a single DIN unit, as opposed to the double DIN the van came with, so I'll gain an extra pocket for storage. For a work vehicle, this will come in handy.

 

[stephen9666]

I installed a cheap head unit without a CD player because I wanted bluetooth audio streaming. It works great, but I'm sure the sound quality would be better out of a higher quality unit. I went with a cheap Boss unit.

I bought mine from Sonic Electronix. That's a site I hadn't heard of before but it has good online reviews. I will definitely order from them again in the future.

I also didn't want one that looks ridiculous. Here's a thread on another forum with some options that don't look so stupid:
http://forums.vwvortex.com/showthread.ph...head-units-ugly

It's a thread that's been going on for years, so you might want to go right to the more modern posts in the last half.

 

[Klutch9]

Originally Posted By: stephen9666
I installed a cheap head unit without a CD player because I wanted bluetooth audio streaming. It works great, but I'm sure the sound quality would be better out of a higher quality unit. I went with a cheap Boss unit.

I bought mine from Sonic Electronix. That's a site I hadn't heard of before but it has good online reviews. I will definitely order from them again in the future.

I also didn't want one that looks ridiculous. Here's a thread on another forum with some options that don't look so stupid:
http://forums.vwvortex.com/showthread.ph...head-units-ugly

It's a thread that's been going on for years, so you might want to go right to the more modern posts in the last half.


I also bought mine from sonicelectronix.com. I have shopped with them before and they are excellent to work with.

 

[HerrStig]

The only way to jam lots of music into a memory of any kind is to compress it, which causes some of the music data to be lost. At some point the compression system does so much to the file folks can hear the difference. Typically, dynamic range and high end suffer the most. In a car you probably won't hear that unless the car is quiet and you have a good system. Try listening to the MP3 version of a classical performance with some GOOD headphones and the difference may become apparent.
I'm convinced that stereo reached a high point in the late 70s when the CD came along, outfits like Marantz, Mac, Carver, Technics, KLH and AR were building good analog gear, since then "progress" means smaller and cheaper plastic boxes.

 

[slacktide_bitog]

Originally Posted By: madRiver
The downsides of a aftermarket unit is the typically hideous light at night and the tiny buttons/knobs/ease of use vs the OEM stuff.

In the


This.

But other than that, there's nothing inherently wrong with aftermarket radios.

Speakers will make more of a difference in sound quality than the head unit.

Also, does your Sedona have the Infinity system? Because many times, the OEM premium systems are harder to replace with aftermarket and have special wiring.

 

[zzyzzx]

I just got rid of a CD changer in a car and removed the head unit that had a CD changer in it and replaced it with a "mechless" unit that has no CD player. I love that it's not as deep, so it's easier to install since I have more room back there. You will not miss the CD's!!! Just play your MP3's from the USB or SD card, not bluetooth, the sound quality from bluetooth isn't as good.

 

[Quattro Pete]

Originally Posted By: HerrStig
The only way to jam lots of music into a memory of any kind is to compress it, which causes some of the music data to be lost. At some point the compression system does so much to the file folks can hear the difference. Typically, dynamic range and high end suffer the most. In a car you probably won't hear that

That's the thing. In a portable environment, most people don't do any critical listening, so it doesn't matter too much. For car/portable MP3 player duty, I typically encode everything using MP3 VBR2 setting, which results in an average bit rate of around 190 kbps. It cuts off all frequencies above 18.5 kHz. Given my age, my ears can't hear anything above about 17 kHz anyway.

Flash memory is cheap these days. You can get a decent 128 GB USB flash drive for around $30, and you can pack a ton of music on it without having to compress it too much. Just make sure your car deck can actually support this size drives.

Quote:
I'm convinced that stereo reached a high point in the late 70s when the CD came along, outfits like Marantz, Mac, Carver, Technics, KLH and AR were building good analog gear, since then "progress" means smaller and cheaper plastic boxes.

First commercial CD titles and players came out in early 80s, but yes, I agree with you in general.

 

[HerrStig]

Originally Posted By: slacktide_bitog
Originally Posted By: madRiver
The downsides of a aftermarket unit is the typically hideous light at night and the tiny buttons/knobs/ease of use vs the OEM stuff.

In the


This.

But other than that, there's nothing inherently wrong with aftermarket radios.

Speakers will make more of a difference in sound quality than the head unit.

Also, does your Sedona have the Infinity system? Because many times, the OEM premium systems are harder to replace with aftermarket and have special wiring.
Translucent model paint can calm down the led bling if you want to pull the faceplate off to get to the bulbs.

 

[hatt]

Originally Posted By: HerrStig
The only way to jam lots of music into a memory of any kind is to compress it, which causes some of the music data to be lost. At some point the compression system does so much to the file folks can hear the difference. Typically, dynamic range and high end suffer the most. In a car you probably won't hear that unless the car is quiet and you have a good system. Try listening to the MP3 version of a classical performance with some GOOD headphones and the difference may become apparent.
CDs are only 700MB at most. You can get a boat load of them uncompressed onto a thumb drive. And them we also have lossless compression.

Quote:
I'm convinced that stereo reached a high point in the late 70s when the CD came along, outfits like Marantz, Mac, Carver, Technics, KLH and AR were building good analog gear, since then "progress" means smaller and cheaper plastic boxes.
Quality audio gear is everywhere. It's not cheap but it wasn't cheap in the good ol days either. A lot of people like comparing high end $1500 1970s gear to <$1000 current gear. Apples to oranges when you add in the inflation.

 

[Jimmy9190]

Most all aftermarket decks nowadays have a USB port or a round aux input on the face of the deck, and a lot of decks have both USB and aux. You can load MP3's on a flash drive or use a portable MP3 player and plug it right into the deck. MP3 at 256 kbps and 320 kbps sound just as good to me as a CD does. In my truck I actually prefer the straight digital sound of an MP3 on a flash drive because there is no secondary digital to analog converter for the MP3 sound to go through like there would be with AAC files on my Ipod.

One thing I learned early with MP3 is sometimes the volume is not all the same for all songs on an album. It can be irritating to always have to turn it up or down, so I use a good freeware program called MP3Gain to normalize the volume of all tracks and eliminate any clipping or distortion. I use Itunes to create MP3 files and it does a fine job, however I have noticed subtle differences in the sound of MP3 files I bought online from MP3Million or Amazon. For some reason, MP3's that start out and are purchased as MP3 files seem to have just a little brighter sound quality. They are probably made with a better codec than what Apple uses.

I changed over to MP3 in my system a few years ago and have not looked back since. I use a metal micro PNY 32GB flash drive that does not protrude out much at all from the face of my Alpine deck so it does not look out of place. My deck does have a CD mechanism but I hardly if ever use it.

 

[exranger06]

I installed aftermarket head units in all of my cars and they all have USB inputs. I use flash drives in my truck and carry my iPod between the other two cars and use that. All of the head units also have CD players, which I use on the rare occasion when I buy a new CD but haven't had a chance to copy it to the iPod/flash drive. I could live without it though. I use lossless compression on everything so I don't lose sound quality. To me, it sounds as good as a CD.

 

[MysticGold04]

I have a JVC headunit I got from SonicElectronix for about 50-60 on clearance with no CD mechanism in it. I have several 8GB flash drives with all of my favorite music on it, and I can stream bluetooth from my phone - Pandora, Spotify, etc. The bonus is that I can do handsfree calls as well. Super awesome!

 

[DBMaster]

If you want to do further online search the term they use for this type of unit is "mechless."

 

[97tbird]

As far as looks go, Pioneer and Alpine are the least hideous.
The Pioneer unit we got for our Elantra is VERY plain looking and looks like a factory unit, and is hardly noticeable. Extra bonus was that the illumination color of the unit matched the Elantra's dash gauge cluster/console backlight color exactly.

(That unit did have CD though, but I think the price difference between units with/without CD is probably not that big...)