Austro Tom: My audiophile friend Bill came up with this:
A recurring theme in this Tesla forum is the lack of both a CD player and an auxiliary-in (3.5mm) jack in the sound system.
This makes playing one’s CDs problematic. Younger drivers are less fazed by this oversight than older ones, since the former tend to have their music collections stored on digital devices that will play via USB or Bluetooth. I am in the latter cohort, and I have no intention of “ripping” my 1,000+ CD collection onto a digital storage device in FLAC or MP3, or any other format, whether lossy or lossless.
Ultimate sound quality is not the issue with me, but rather the time, know-how and equipment needed to do such a massive conversion just to play my favorite tunes in my Model S.
I have a workaround, and it will only cost you $60 and a few minutes time:
Go to Best Buy and purchase their Insignia® brand portable CD player. Be sure you select the model with the “line-out” jack and not just the headphone jack, for around $25. Also purchase the Aluratek Bluetooth Universal Audio TRANSMITTER module for $29. This device is 50% the size of a Zippo® lighter. It plugs into the line-out jack of the player with a short cable. I had no trouble pairing the sound system in both of my Model S vehicles to the Bluetooth transmitter, so your system should be compatible with this same setup. The transmitter has a built-in rechargeable battery and comes with a USB cable for charging. You need not have that USB cable plugged in during normal operation.
Battery life between charges is rated at about 50 hours. The CD player has a 60 second or so buffer, so with the smooth ride of the car you should not experience skips unless you are broadsided by a Mack truck, or have grandchildren in the car using the player as a football.
Some caveats: The player I purchased takes two AA batteries and there is NO “cigarette socket” or other adapter for providing current from the vehicle. Buy a large pack of AA alkalines from Best Buy when you are there (if you can find a portable CD player that has a 12v power cable, just be sure it also has the “line-out” jack as well).
Some players do not have the “resume” feature which if present would allow the disc to resume playing where it left off when the power is off. I am not aware of any way to have the player “connected” via Bluetooth to the car and have my cell phone connected by Bluetooth (that could be a good thing: would you rather listen to Haydn’s Sun Concerto Number 20, or someone trying to talk you into donating funds to the “Save the African Tsetse Fly” campaign?) Perhaps there is a way to pair two BT devices simultaneously, but I am not aware of how to do that.
With Bluetooth there is some loss of fidelity as compared to a direct CD player connection, but it still sounds good, and maybe even the same, as the common lossy MP3 files on storage devices most others use.
