Doesn't stock with USB music, or your phone already sound "pretty decent" LOL

Kidding, glad you found a solution that works for you.

 

it definitely sounds better than my phone

 

Noticed the coins rattling around there... Life is better since I ditched that stupid tray. It was always falling down into the bin.

 

yeah i hear what your saying lol. I tried keeping them in the little slots but they all fell out anyway. Found a cool tray on amazon that I thought went down in the bottom but it actually floats on the top on the same support brackets that the little tray sits on but takes up the whole top instead of floating around. you have to take it out to get underneath in the bottom. but It doesn't work with the cd player sticking up too much so cant have everything i guess lol.

 

You can't hear the difference in quality between a CD and a rip unless your rips are horrible. The two situations in which audio quality degrades are 1) a lossy format is converted into another lossy format or 2) the bitrate is set way too low. A 96 or 128 kbps lossy sound file sounds worse than a tape, but there is no excuse to have any of those (I keep a few ancient ones from Kazaa because I could never find the orignal in a better format and to recall how bad they are). Rips at 256 kbps or better in .mp3 .ogg et c are indistinguishable from the source even with higher end audio equipment, and certainly not in a noisy car with the factory upgrade stereo system.

My advice is too make sure that your rips are at least 192 and preferably 256 kbps and ideally re-rip your CDs into a lossless format like FLAC. That way you have an archive that you can convert into whatever lossy format is popular for storage (or just use them as is as storage prices continue to fall). Keep them on an external HDD somewhere safe, and you'll never be without your music just as you remembered it.

 

Sort of off topic, okay, very off topic.

I use a baby binder clip to hold the tray from sliding. The new system seems similar to what my 2016 looks like.
I never have change escape the holder.

 

It amazes me how people can hijack a thread using a time-wasting thesis. Glad I kept reading.
traded my '14 Explorer, with a CD player, for this '21 Lariat, and have the exact same issue. Thanks for trying the unit that I too saw on Amazon. I'm so glad it worked well. What appears on your sync 4 screen when you plug it into the port? Is there a lot of information on the screen about the CD in the player? Does the port both power the player and transmit the sound, or is there more to hooking it up? Thanks again for documenting.
SHOBLOCK

 

I have over 3000 CDs and when I started ripping them to digital format in the early 2000s the hard drive spaces on devices like an Ipod were pretty small. I ripped the vast majority of them at 128 to fit as many on as I could. There is no way I can go back and re rip 3000 CDs now. It would take probably a year. this is as good a solution as I could find

 

I hear you man. was just asking about anyone that has had any experience with particular models or brands. Kind of expected a flood of "you shouldn't want to listen to CDs any more" lol. in terms of your question, it doesn't show any info on the screen other than WAV file and number of track unfortunately. may be just the model I had as I went with the cheapest but they all looked like the same black box on amazon. the USB under your sync4 screen does both the power and audio so its just one usb cable which came with it as well as an extension. I did have to use the extension. The one in the console in between the front seats seems to do power only. also the adhesive pad that came with it to mount lasted about 15 minutes of stickiness before it failed so I just used some hard core velcro. Seems to have good skip protection though. Haven't heard a skip yet. Seems like a lot of the current CD walkman models have blue tooth audio capability and I don't know if the audio quality is as good over that but I bet those are better players. This seems to be marketed specifically for auto use.

 

Sorry, off topic again.

Another trick to keep the tray from moving is to wrap a rubber band around the end of the tray. The rubber band gives a grippy surface so it doesn't slide.