I am just helping my friend. She has an old school CD player that she connects to laptop for music.
A. Are there any small external speakers (like the portable ones we get) that can connect to the CD player? Like the bose portable bluetooth you get but connects to the CD player?
The USB port on your old school CD player do not output audio, they are typically used for USB drives (for playing back digital audio files) and as such won't do anything even if you plug in an external speaker to it.
Thanks. Makes sense.
The bose portable bluetooth speaker has a 3.5mm jack so you can use that to connect to the CD Player if it has an AUX port to connect up headphones. It won't connect over a USB cable though, that port on the CD player is just used so it can playback MP3 files.
Do you know what types of outputs the CD player has? It will likely have:
1) Headphone Out (analog, 1/8" TRS), and to a lesser degree,
2) Line Out (analog, 1/8" TRS), and/or
3) SPDIF Out (digital, coax or optical).
These inputs are Wired and your friend needs speakers that support such connections.
If the CD player is relatively modern, it may also have a Bluetooth output which allows it to be used with today's Bluetooth speakers.
The USB port on the player, as scrimshaw mentioned, is unlikely output type.
Most old school CD players connect by RCA cables. Edifier R1280T are powered bookshelf speakers that have input by RCA cables. See Amazon & Kogan etc. This is the first example I came across, just to give you an idea of what you might be looking for.
(My previous direct link appears to have been unitentionally tainted with Amazon affliate/referral linkage)
As an alternative, perhaps she continues to connect CD player (how is she doing this?) to laptop but outputs from computer via Bluetooth to suitable speakers)
Loot at the Creative Pebble V2 or V3 ;)
https://au.creative.com/p/speakers/creative-pebble-v3
Different is V2 is powered by USB and the sound by AUX.
V3 have power and sound via USB, but you can add an AUX cable (not included) or Bluetooth.
You could get some small powered speakers that connect to the CD player headphone jack.