How do I make my portable CD player work?

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Fredericton Canada
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2018 CX-5 GT
Even though my 2018 has no CD player I'd still like to play some CD's while driving. I plugged my portable CD player into one of the USB ports but under "Audio Sources" on the front screen neither the USB1 nor USB2 are highlighted in white so I can't play a CD. What am I doing wrong?? (uhm)
 
I really can't help except to suggest that you may want to consider ripping your CDs and loading them onto a USB thumb drive. There are free CD ripping software available online. I have all my CDs and LPs (from the really old days) on my laptop and loaded on several thumb drives. I have two of them in the CX5 & they work seamlessly with the CX5s entertainment system.

Wade
 
I don't think you'll be able to directly play audio CDs through the USB. The radio only supports FAT32 USB storage devices. Furthermore, it only supports MP3/WMA/AAC/OGG file formats.

Does your portable CD player have a AUX jack? You might need to plug it into the car's AUX and just use USB to power the player.
 
I don't think you'll be able to directly play audio CDs through the USB. The radio only supports FAT32 USB storage devices. Furthermore, it only supports MP3/WMA/AAC/OGG file formats.

Does your portable CD player have a AUX jack? You might need to plug it into the car's AUX and just use USB to power the player.

^^ This.

Except that I don't believe that the USB ports can source enough current to adequately power your CD player. Check your owner's manual for info on the amount of current the USBs can provide and then check on the amount of current that your CD players needs.
 
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Even though my 2018 has no CD player I'd still like to play some CD's while driving. I plugged my portable CD player into one of the USB ports but under "Audio Sources" on the front screen neither the USB1 nor USB2 are highlighted in white so I can't play a CD. What am I doing wrong?? (uhm)
Rip your CDs to your computer and sync to your phone and play over Bluetooth
 
There should be a computer program (for computers that still have CDROMs) to automatically create a Spotify playlist from songs on the CD
 
I really can't help except to suggest that you may want to consider ripping your CDs and loading them onto a USB thumb drive. There are free CD ripping software available online. I have all my CDs and LPs (from the really old days) on my laptop and loaded on several thumb drives. I have two of them in the CX5 & they work seamlessly with the CX5s entertainment system.

Wade

At 30+/- minutes to rip a CD that could take an huge amount of time to copy any collection!!
 
I don't think you'll be able to directly play audio CDs through the USB. The radio only supports FAT32 USB storage devices. Furthermore, it only supports MP3/WMA/AAC/OGG file formats.

Does your portable CD player have a AUX jack? You might need to plug it into the car's AUX and just use USB to power the player.

Unfortunately my portable CD player does not have an AUX jack. I also thought that this idea would resolve my problem until I saw no AUX jack on the CD player. Maybe I need to shop around for such a player. Having to rip all my CD's on to a flash drive could take weeks or even months!!
 
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Unfortunately my portable CD player does not have an AUX jack. I also thought that this idea would resolve my problem until I saw no AUX jack on the CD player. Maybe I need to shop around for such a player. Having to rip all my CD's on to a flash drive could take weeks or even months!!

Does it have a headphone jack? That's the same port for aux.. you just need an aux cord, which is basically two headphone Jack's on each end.
 
Unfortunately my portable CD player does not have an AUX jack. I also thought that this idea would resolve my problem until I saw no AUX jack on the CD player. Maybe I need to shop around for such a player. Having to rip all my CD's on to a flash drive could take weeks or even months!!

With a moderately powerful PC it only takes a few minutes to rip an entire CD. Depending on the sample rate (compression quality), you might be able to get your entire CD collection on one or two USB sticks. However, it gets unwieldy and tedious searching through the a large storage device to find what you are looking for. Seriously, were you planning on taking your entire CD collection with you?
 
Find a wireless FM modulator for it.

It transmits via an unused FM channel that's at the far end of the scale, so you just tune to that channel on your radio.

I used one in my 1990 Volvo for my portable XM radio.
 
Find a wireless FM modulator for it.

It transmits via an unused FM channel that's at the far end of the scale, so you just tune to that channel on your radio.

I used one in my 1990 Volvo for my portable XM radio.

While this will work, it is extremely bandwidth limited. It's so much easier and cleaner to just rip them to a flash drive. If the OP doesn't have the technical know how, maybe someone in their family can help. I just did the same for my 80 year old parents. They couldn't be happier, now that they don't have to carry around cd's any longer.
 
While this will work, it is extremely bandwidth limited. It's so much easier and cleaner to just rip them to a flash drive. If the OP doesn't have the technical know how, maybe someone in their family can help. I just did the same for my 80 year old parents. They couldn't be happier, now that they don't have to carry around cd's any longer.

Am I wrong in thinking you can just put the CD into the drive of your pc and copy the files to a usb drive? There's no special software required for those files, is there?

I'll bet your folks are astonished at how many CDs fit on a thumb drive, huh? I am. Probably their entire collection.
 
Am I wrong in thinking you can just put the CD into the drive of your pc and copy the files to a usb drive? There's no special software required for those files, is there?

I'll bet your folks are astonished at how many CDs fit on a thumb drive, huh? I am. Probably their entire collection.

You need a program that converts them to a format, like MP3. I have about 1k cd's that I have now converted 3x. Once to 128k MP3, then to 256k MP3 and just recently to lossless FLAC format. I just wish Mazda supported FLAC.

As far as what fits on a thumb drive, all my 256k MP3's fit on a 128k drive. For my FLAC files, I have a portable player that has 2 400GB cards. Some day this will be the standard and we'll see 1TB flash drives. I hope I live to see it. :)

Edit: The 1TB flash drives do already exist. I guess I need to stay current!
 
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Find a wireless FM modulator for it.

It transmits via an unused FM channel that's at the far end of the scale, so you just tune to that channel on your radio.

I used one in my 1990 Volvo for my portable XM radio.

That was a good solution in the 90s, but no more. As Sig said, it really does not sound good. OK for talk radio, not for music.
 
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