AM I NOT COMPACT ENOUGH?
CDs are all but gone from new cars. Why are they getting the boot, and is there an alternative?
Sixteen years ago, Kasey Chambers famously and plaintively sang “Am I not pretty enough?” as her relationship came to an end. Now in
2018 another long-term relationship is reportedly ending, as more and more auto manufacturers seek to ditch the compact disc player from their new model cars. It is a relationship that has lasted more than three decades, so why is it on the way out now?
Well, it turns out that compact as a CD disc slot is, it is not quite compact enough to keep its spot on today’s dashboard — dominated as this now is by the trend for ever larger infotainment screens.
Locally, Holden has been quietly deleting the CD since late 2012, with some models of the pint-sized Barina losing the wherewithal to spin discs first. But it wasn’t just an issue with space in compact cars — the generouslyproportioned Colorado utes and SUVs dropped the feature less than a year later.
Mind you, the trend for CD-less new model cars, while unmistakable, is quite patchy, with some notable exceptions. You’ll still find a CD in many BMW models, though the car will politely offer to transfer any CD you pop in to its own hard drive — to eliminate the chore of loading next time.
The ability to play a CD is not gone completely in aftermarket equipment, of course, and in upmarket touch-screen head units the drive is usually a DVD player that also offers the convenience of playing the odd CD — for old time’s sake. They still have a place, too in the more utilitarian (one might even say ‘old-school’) non-touchscreen entertainment units. I checked the current range of Kenwood in-car audio receivers, and this has eight CD-equipped units and only three non-CD models.
A touching debate on knobs
Sometimes the CDs have been simply moved from their traditional spot at the centre of the dashboard, a position regarded as ‘high value real-estate’ by vehicle interior designers seeking to provide ever more impressive infotainment screens. The bar for screen size, by the way, is currently being set by Tesla. Their Model S and Model X (pictured right) both sport massive 17-inch portrait-format capacitive touchscreen models that dominate the dash, embodying with a tap or a swipe
almost every traditional switch, knob and indicator for entertainment, climate control, navigation, and even operating the sunroof.
There has, however, been quite some resistance from consumers on the touchscreen front. A couple of months back the Autoweek blog reported that the volume knob, displaced by touch-sensitive sliders in quite
a few models — is making a comeback: “The tried-and-true, if dated-looking, way to turn the sound up or down with minimal distraction is very much alive in most 2018 models,” Autoweek revealed. “American Honda relented on the 2017 CR-V and 2018 Accord after customers complained about having to repeatedly tap alongside the touch screen instead of just flicking a wrist.”
It is all too true. Most would agree that a mechanical control is easier to find without taking your eyes off the traffic, while touchscreens require you to actually look down while making adjustments. To their credit, Honda was quick to acknowledge their error with a senior Vice-President at the press conference playing an absolutely straight bat: “Our customers and frankly, many of you, said, ‘We want a knob,’ so the knob is back.”
Meanwhile, other manufacturers have been shifting the CD slot all around the cabin. VW has relegated the CD player to the glove box — a location for discs with some history to it, as we shall see later. Other locations now housing the once front-and-centre mechanism are the very top of the centre stack, or the very bottom, or even, remarkably, within the centre console on some US models.
We shouldn’t be surprised to see older formats disappearing, of course, although car manufacturers, perhaps with a nod to mature buyers, have been slow to update technology in the past. Cassette players were still being offered as in-car entertainment as late as 2010 — which was the first year that worldwide sales of the iPhone overtook the sales of the iPod and a full 25 years since the first car CD players appeared. In other ways, though, the automotive industry — at least in America — has been pretty willing to push the boundaries of entertainment systems in the past.
The most infamous is the 8-track player which appeared in the mid-1960s. This used an endless loop of quarter-inch tape running at 3.75 inches per second, wound inside a special cartridge. It was derived from the Fidelipac (or NAB) cartridge which was to become the most popular format for radio stations to play commercials, jingles and sound effects from the 1960s well into the 1980s. In the 8-track version, the big, chunky cartridges could hold up to 80 minutes of music — a double-LP album’s worth of music, though the playing time was split into four stereo tracks that required a pause to physi- cally shift the head from one track to the next. These 8-tracks were embraced enthusiastically in America and a select few overseas markets. By 1967, Ford offered an option for 8-track players in every US model. They even appeared in Rolls-Royce and Bentley models in the UK.
But there were plenty of issues, many caused by the ‘endless loop’ mechanism. The tape was pulled out from the centre of the spool and wound back onto the outside. This was prone to jamming once the graphite back coating that allowed the tape to slip out from the middle of the spool started to wear off. The compact cassette, which was also roughly a quarter of the size of the bulky 8-track cartridge, didn’t have this problem and was more reliable as it didn’t require the movinghead mechanism of the 8-track. From the early 1970s and for nearly 30 years, cassettes dominated in-car entertainment.
Vinyl takes to the road
But there’s one footnote to the in-car entertainment story that is worth recalling. Well before the CD, cassette and 8-track, for nearly a decade between the mid-’50s and mid-’60s, vinyl record players were the premium offering in automotive entertainment. Often hidden in the glove box, the earliest units were limited to a tiny catalogue of specially made 7-inch disks issued by Columbia that played at the unusual speed of just 16 rpm (exactly half the speed of 33 rpm LPs). Pretty soon people tired of the limited choice, and car record players that could handle standard 45rpm singles started to appear. The best of these had automatic-change mechanisms that could play up to five discs, allowing around 20 minutes of music before reloading.
Naturally, the big challenge was keeping the needle from jumping out of the groove on rough roads and the solution was ingenious. The players were mounted upside down, with a jukebox-style changer mechanism that applied enough pressure on the upside-down tone-arm to keep the stylus in place even on corrugated surfaces. Needless to say, with a tracking force probably closer to a couple of kilograms than a couple of grams, wear was a significant issue! Our Editor recalls one of these in the family car, which also required the centres of singles to be ‘punched out’ in order to fit on the thick central spindle. Many of his early 1970s singles remain in this state, playable only with a ‘spider’ filling this gap (pictured) .
Given the current, seemingly unstoppable resurgence of vinyl, it is tempting to imagine the return of in-car turntables. Though I admit you won’t find many high-trackingforce upside-down players these days, there have been a few vertical players that might fit the bill. One or two, like the Gramovox are still available, though these aren’t actually designed to be used on-the-move (review at avhub.com.au/gramovox).
A better candidate might well be the laser turntable from the ELP Company in Japan ( www.elpj.com), which we have mentioned in this column before. It uses a purely optical pick-up with two laser beams to read the audio information on the wall of the groove, while another three lasers track the groove and position the pick-up. While this would eliminate the problem of wear and should be able to track at least as well as a car CD, I have to admit there are a couple of downsides to the idea. Firstly, laser turntables are a little pricey, costing approximately the same as a small car. But even more of a drawback might be finding space on the dashboard for a 30-centimetre-wide slot! I think this is about where we started. “Am I not compact enough?…”