The Brennan B2

Hi All,

I'm probably going to get laughed at and ridiculed for this but honestly this unit has been life changing for me. I will always be a cd guy. I also love the convenience of a cd carousel so as to not have to get up and change cd's just to hear 1 particular song as I enjoy going from Iron Maiden to Clannad to Diana Krall. I recently was able to get my hands on a vintage Pioneer PD-F908 101 cd carousel (same unit I had way back in the day). And whilst it brought me right back to the day 20 years ago when I had everything I needed in a small remote and never needed to leave my sweet spot (I had also created and printed out a spreadsheet listing every cd/song lineup so I knew exactly what number to hit for any particular song), these units are old and their days are surely numbered. I looked at getting the Bluesound but you need a hardwired connection to the router which isn't possible for me. I didn't think anything else existed that fit my needs.

Well, I literally stumbled across the B2 and after much reading and angst I decided to give it a try. I had never ever ripped a cd and was skeptical that FLAC=totally lossless compression. Well HOLY S**T! It worked and the quality is truly every bit as good! I have the B2 connected to a Schiit Bifrost 2 DAC via a Lifatec Toslink cable. Honestly this is even better than the carousel because I now have the Brennan app on my phone which gives me all the options and then some like creating playlists! I can also store ALL of my cd's rather than just 101. I am actually buying and expanding my cd lineup and now have access to way more cd's and songs than I ever had! The best part is I got the smallest B2 (240g) and have ripped all of my old cd's and the new ones and I haven't even hit the 1/2 way point of storage.

Initially I hit a few very small quirks (had to buy the WiFi extender through Amazon as my signal was very weak) with the B2 (IP changing the address frequently), and the unit does tend to rip slowly, but nothing at all I wasn't able to figure out or deal with. The B2 even ripped cd's I wasn't able to listen to through the cd player due to wear and tear! This unit is freaking amazing!