Since the rise of streaming audio, CD players have been phased out of vehicles ... which is then converted into sound through a digital-to-analog converter (DAC) during playback.

A similar fate has befallen the laser head of CD mechanisms, which is why we don’t have those smooth, rounded players anymore. Economies of scale in the early 2000s mean that even a cheap player ...

When activated, audio would be stored in RAM before being piped through the digital-to-analog converter, giving the CD player time to find where it left off reading and allowing playback to ...