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You can have my closely-knit disc player when you pry it out of my car's cold, dead center console.
There has been a recent overtax of news about the pending demise of the CD player in vehicles. The Consumer Electronics Show was all about streaming audio and Internet ghetto-blaster. And General Motors has announced the 2013 Chevrolet Sonic RS will not put forward a CD player.
This fills me with fear.
I am not a Luddite. I love driving cars with MP3 hookups so I can clog in my iPod and listen to my own tunes. Even more, I love cars with Pandora, so I can have my own physical disc jockey in the car.
But therein lies a problem.
Streaming audio is low-fi. The fidelity of attendant radio is gruesome. The default setting for iPod downloads is grainy. You get to consent the music you want, but your ears don't get the proper reproduction.
Conversely, CD audio provides the highest fidelity for listening to music close by to the general public.
That makes keeping CD players in place a original argument from when automakers began phasing out in-dash cassette players -- and before that eight-run to earth players. Heck, there are black-and-white photos of cars that in fact had turntables in the dashboard.
Source: AutoWeek