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!
kingbr
HI there, 

Very glad to read your enthusiasm and endorsement of this handy unit!
I've bought one recently and have been ripping cd's for the past few days. 

May I ask you just a couple of tech-related questions? If you could be so kind as to divulge with your expertise?

It would be appreciated. 

As you seem like you've gotten quite seasoned with B2 as far as the technical know-how as well as it's connections to things. 

Okay. I've ripped about 100 cd's thus far. Things I've noticed when the CD's either cracked or damaged or dirty. 

Two scenarios:

1) "Incomplete Rip" display - this is straight-forward message, simple to get.
2)  " ripping song 2" out of 545 tracks...... 17% to 20 % etc - now this is weird. 
       Obviously the cd doesn't have that many tracks, I believe it gets confused. 
        I've corrected this by turning it off/on, then re-try, but it will come up now and again.
        Admittedly I have a couple of cd's which are pretty rough, only on close inspection is thiis           evident.

Other issue: Flac compression on stand-by mode when idle

Now when the CD's aren't in the unit at all. After having ripped the 90 to 100 something cd's which I guess equates to 754 tracks in total, the unit continues to run in the background. 

The display states Compressing: FLAC 82% 80 of 754

And the percentage keeps running up as it continues it's task. 

Is this suppose to be happening?

So when I rip the cd and it ejects itself out of the unit, which takes a few minutes, isn't it 
done? Like the files are compressed and saved at the same time?

This indicates to me in contrast, that the unit when it rips just shoves the cd's data in a line of other cd's data wherein, it builds and builds up. Like at a food bank line if I can make that analogy, where patron file in singly file lines waiting to be served. 

Or is this due to something else? 





 


Just scratching my head and wondering why you posted this in the "Analog" forum....
Ditto to what Ozzy said. Plus, on any digital forum you’d get more expert responses.