stand-alone car cd player recommendations

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my son’s new to him 2021 cpo vw tiguan s doesn’t have a cd player (we knew that). he has a cd collection and i wish to gift him a stand-alone car cd player. uninterested in replacing the head unit or downloading to a thumb drive. any recommendations? thanks!
 
my son’s new to him 2021 cpo vw tiguan s doesn’t have a cd player (we knew that). he has a cd collection and i wish to gift him a stand-alone car cd player. uninterested in replacing the head unit or downloading to a thumb drive. any recommendations? thanks!

They still make portable CD players (the original of which was probably the Sony Discman). The prices, strangely enough, are about the same as what you would have paid for one 25 years ago. And 25 years ago, your AM/FM/tape headunit might have included an aux input designed to accept the headphone output from one of these portable CD players.

Pretty much any of them should do the job. Years ago you might have found one that included a cigarette lighter power cord so you could run it off that instead of two AA batteries, but I doubt you'd find one like that today. They might still include a DC power jack, but you'll have to source the cigarette lighter cord separately.
 
I had a Sony Discman with an adapter that went in the tape deck, on some springy mount suction cupped to my windshield in the 90s.
I was just cleaning not too long ago and found my old discman that I finally tossed out. The drawback with it was that it would skip if you hit a few bumps. Haven't listened to a CD in years, current cars have 6 cd changer built it and I've never used them in the 6-8 years I've owned them.
 
I was just cleaning not too long ago and found my old discman that I finally tossed out. The drawback with it was that it would skip if you hit a few bumps. Haven't listened to a CD in years, current cars have 6 cd changer built it and I've never used them in the 6-8 years I've owned them.
The spring mount thing was supposed to cushion shocks, and the discman had, I think, 3 seconds “anti skip” that worked most of the time. I don’t miss those days hooking that thing up with wires all over the place and a car full of CDs melting in the sun.
 
I was just cleaning not too long ago and found my old discman that I finally tossed out. The drawback with it was that it would skip if you hit a few bumps. Haven't listened to a CD in years, current cars have 6 cd changer built it and I've never used them in the 6-8 years I've owned them.
In the end they got 30 seconds - 60 seconds of buffering for under $30 so a major bump it read that far ahead and could recover back to same place in that amount of time. Basically skip free but guessing the ones if sold now lack that.
 
Funny thing is our similar 2018 Tiguan SE has factory one behind the glove box door we NEVER use. Likely a good cost cut save VW $100/car or add a new feature with little price increase.

Options are that clunky usb one but at least works on screen. Note it is converting the music to MP3 format to play on car system . You sure your son just won’t transfer CD to phone and use the simple apple or android car interface?

Otherwise you can buy a Sony disc man or copy and make sure it has 15-30seconds of buffer to read ahead not it but when it skips on bumps so it can recover in that time and not be annoying. The Aux port takes that however control is horrific at best and definition of distracted driving.
 
If he’s got any kind of a computer, he can use iTunes or other free software to “rip” his entire CD collection to mp3 files, which can be copied to a usb thumb drive and plugged into his new head unit. Much more elegant way to go than having a CD player bouncing around on a wire.
 
Serious question, why does he want to lug around the CDs, when all of his CD collection can be put on one tiny flash drive?

As @meep said, his entire CD collection can be ripped using iTunes mp3 or AAC format (go with AAC) and put it on the flash drive.

I personally would use Exact Audio Copy, esp. if he has a premium audio system. It takes some time to set it up, but once done, it's awesome.
 
Serious question, why does he want to lug around the CDs, when all of his CD collection can be put on one tiny flash drive?

As @meep said, his entire CD collection can be ripped using iTunes mp3 or AAC format (go with AAC) and put it on the flash drive.

I personally would use Exact Audio Copy, esp. if he has a premium audio system. It takes some time to set it up, but once done, it's awesome.
thanks for all the replies.
unfortunately his situation for the coming 1-2 years doesn’t give him much opportunity to copy his cd collection to a thumb drive, later he can copy. he also cannot always rely on cellphone service for pandora, etc. switching out a cd offers an easier choice than scrolling through a thumb drive.
 
thanks for all the replies.
unfortunately his situation for the coming 1-2 years doesn’t give him much opportunity to copy his cd collection to a thumb drive, later he can copy. he also cannot always rely on cellphone service for pandora, etc. switching out a cd offers an easier choice than scrolling through a thumb drive.
You can download songs for offline use with all the major streaming services.

And they'll be right there in Carplay/AA
 
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