🔊 Brennan B2 (480GB Black) HiFi - SSD CD Ripper, Storage and Player with Sonos, Bluetooth, Spotify, YouTube, Internet Radio, Stereo Power Amplifier, NAS, WAV, Lossless (FLAC) & MP3. Review

Wow! Just finished the last CD. 13,908 tracks, 1133 albums occupied 380.78 GB. There was almost 100.gb left, I was impressed, halfway through I didn't think everything would fit. With a little trouble finding covers for some of the CDs, I had to take a picture and send it to Brennan for demonstration. Not too happy with the web interface, a bit patchy. If you have the time and a bit of patience, this is a great way to store your CD collection.

I have the 480GB SSD version and am quite happy with it. I've stored over 800 CDs on it so far and I love the convenience of being able to listen to whatever comes to my mind just by scrolling my phone's screen. I save everything as FLAC files and now send the optical output to a NAD D3045 and then to Klipsch bookshelf speakers complete with a Klipsch subwoofer. There are additional web interfaces depending on your preferences. You can also add album art.

I really wanted to like B2. Rip CDs easily and quickly. My device had no HDMI output. I activated the feature via the web interface. The analog output was ok. The web interface is hard to use. I ripped a CD and it showed up as one cut but B2 showed all the cuts. I would remove the CD and copy again and it would look fine. Sounds good! Really well made and packaged! Perhaps a newer model will meet my needs. Back to Revane, unfortunately.

I was really excited about this item and was excited to be able to download all my CDs and play them randomly, only to find that B2 is indeed will not read ID3 information for each disk. This meant information had to be entered manually, one plate at a time. I have over a thousand discs. Otherwise, setup was pretty easy. I've tried loading a database (not Gracenote) of device information to automatically fill in ID3 information, but to no great extent. I was disappointed and returned the item.

The Brennan B2 is a unique product. It can rip CDs, play CDs, act as a music NAS, play music from Internet radio, and more. I ended up just using the B2 as a NAS because I couldn't get the wifi I needed for stable music playback unless I had the B2 connected to my router. Since then I do not have problems anymore. It works great with my Sonos Wi-Fi speaker system. I ripped my entire CD collection, about 350 CDs, and now play them with the touch of a finger using the Sonos app. Very cool, but…

I got Brennan after hearing lots of good feedback from Facebook group members. I increased my digital downloads and the old iPod I was using just wasn't working for me. At first I was frustrated with the problems of loading hundreds of my mp3s onto Brennan (it didn't run smoothly) and then it took me a while to figure out the "classic mode" so it would play an album and then stop. . as opposed to playing the next album in alphabetical order. But once I got over them, I fell in love with the B2.

The Brennan B2 isn't perfect. WiFi drops out from time to time even if the device is in the same room as my router (and I'm using an external USB WiFi antenna). And if the web interface works well (there are also small, but sometimes annoying glitches here), then the mobile interface is too limited. Brennan would benefit greatly from his own dedicated application. Other than that I really love Brennan B2! This is the best way to play my CDs through my Sonos system, and the hard drive can hold…