Originally Posted by Neversummer

I’ll take your word for it, as you seem to have considerably more music background than myself. I was only stating what other music nuts have told me. They wouldn’t go near CD’s.

Originally Posted by Accurate

I'm still pondering the best way forward for my particular situation, but now I have some good information as a base.

Originally Posted by fiver

This is absolutely incorrect - original commercial CDs are not "compressed" and provide the highest fidelity / lowest noise of any commercially available hard-media, limited only by the skills of the recording engineer (which would apply to all media versions of that recording).

Original CD's ripped to a "lossless" format on USB will do the best job of preserving that original fidelity. Typical MP3 format is not "lossless", it is compressed / compromised fidelity (which you may or may not be able to discern with your ear and playback equipment)

There are many ways to accomplish that, I happen to like and use the freeware "Exact Audio Copy" and rip to the popular FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) format which is recognized by my 2022 F150 SYNC system.

I have over 130GB of FLAC files on a USB stick arranged by Artist (folder)>Album (folders under Artist)>Track (FLAC files in Album folders). That's a total of 581 folders and 4618 files at the moment, and always growing.

With one steering-wheel button push and voice-command I can listen to any Album (with song playback in original recorded order) OR an Artist (random order songs from their library) OR a specific song title.

IMO the current SYNC voice-command playback feature is outstanding, rarely requiring correction.

The audio quality of the playback, even with lossless FLAC files, is a separate matter entirely; that's a function of the audio components (amp, speakers, etc), not a limitation of the recorded media. No question that the music on my USB stick sounds much better on my home system than my truck system.

Originally Posted by Neversummer

I’ll take your word for it, as you seem to have considerably more music background than myself. I was only stating what other music nuts have told me. They wouldn’t go near CD’s.

Originally Posted by Accurate

Thanks everyone for all the excellent information and advice !
I'm still pondering the best way forward for my particular situation, but now I have some good information as a base.