Brennan B3 (2TB Black) Hifi - Hard disk CD ripper & recorder, storage and player with Bluetooth, Compatible with Sonos, Internet Radio, Stereo Power amplifier, NAS, Wav, Lossless (FLAC) and MP3.

Product Information

By contrast MP3 and AAC are called “lossy” because they throw away some information to save even more space.] In fact the music is stored as WAV files at this stage and if you are not short of disk space you need not compress them. Two USB 2.0 type A ports for peripherals - WiFi dongle, Bluetooth dongle, USB Hub, USB DAC, USB storage device. Get into the menu by pushing the volume knob. Turn to select an item. Push again to choose that item. Get the latest software from www.brennan.co.uk. You can find the date of your current software in Stats.

You will need to plug the Bluetooth dongle into a USB port to use Bluetooth. The Bluetooth dongle is usually marked V5.0. In my case, this wasn't true, when i opened the box, it looked brand new, all the wires were neatly bundled, everything was wrapped in plastic, there was a protective film over the display but when i plugged it in there was already 334 songs by 30 artists installed on the HD.. in effect, someone else's music library so in reality it was pre-owned. You must first dowlnload the listing using Settings & Tools > Maintenance > Advanced > Install Radiofeeds BBC is introducing a new internet radio system called HLS and the old streams will terminate in 2023. Radiofeeds has augmented its list of 1000+ stations to support these new HLS stations. After the software upgrade you should use Settings->Radio Update to get the new list. You can then find the new stations using Find Stations. You can use playlists to create collections belonging to different family members, different genres and moods or for special occasions. SpotifyBluetooth In - play music from your mobile phone or tablet through B3 - nothing to do on B3 just connect on your phone/tablet and play. The Apps for iPhone and Android give you comprehensive control of any Brennan on the same Wifi network. This function starts compression of all uncompressed (WAV) files to MP3. Use MP3 if you are short of space or quality is not so important.

There isn't any documentation for Bluetooth Out yet but you should be able to work it out. You can drive it from the front panel or the original web UI (Cog then Bluetooth). I'm pleased to say that vTuner have added support for the new BBC streaming mechanism (known as HLS). This necessitated a bit of a rewrite in the Brennan code. I have today released new code for B2B. Please let us know of any difficulties. I aim to release code for BB1 and B3 next week. I could not really find a way to fit a colour display. I needed a letter box shaped display but colour displays usually have a squarish TV shape. B2 and B2B have both been updated to include the new Radiofeeds list and the change to the web UI presets panel. After upgrading the software you should load the new Radiofeeds list using Settings > Radio Update CDs also do not contain any cover or album art. But the Musicbrainz database has links to where B3 can find suitable images.B3 lets you compress these WAV files into FLAC files. FLAC files are about 60% of the size but there is no loss of information so the process is reversible. FLAC stands for Free Lossless Audio Compression. And Lossless refers to the fact that there is no loss of information. Deletes the offline database (mydb) if installed. You only need the offline database if you don't have an internet connection. It can clutter the results so this removes it. Set the path to the Brennan B2 music folder. You can use Browse - you will find it under the network folder. There is no support for sets of CDs. B3 treats the CDs as individual albums. Here are some things to consider. The screen is bigger on the x-14 and seemingly more user friendly than the Brennan, but probably comparable. I like the CD art icons displayed on the x-14 during play, as well as for cataloguing and searching, which is more like a jukebox style, rather than just lists.

You don’t need to connect to Wifi to play music and videos but you need Wifi for some functions like internet radio, the web UI, getting the time and transferring music from a computer.Loads the offline CD database (mydb) from the USB memory - you can get this file from a link on www.brennan.co.uk - its more than 1Gb The offline database has two disadvantages. It does not have any album art and it does not know about recent CDs. The brennan has a menu system to let you find and play music and videos. The menu is also used for things like setting up Wifi and loading music from USB. The phone should be on the same local (Wifi) network as the Brennan and you can control several Brennans with the app.

The queue mechanism leverages the playlist functionality so you will see it creates a temporary playlist called Queue. This is the most requested function on the forum so let me know what you think and let me know of any side effects. You can play music on the B2 to any and all of your Sonos speakers. Add music to the queue and create Sonos playlists. The B2 becomes part of the Sonos system. iPad NAS App This only shows if there is a USB memory device - like a USB hard disk plugged in. Starts the USB MenuThe biggest difference is the hardisk memory capacity. The x-14 can take up to 8 TB, whereas the Brennan only about 1-2 TB max. And the cheaper models of the latter only use SD memory cards, which to me seems like a rip-off. Yes you have to buy the disc or sshd on the x-14 separately and install it yourself, but its very easy, and the company will walk you through it. To me it was worth it. And the price is cheap for 1-2 TB. And if you want to increase later, you can import the pre-existing DB. You cant do that with the Brennan. You will then see the music folder on the brennan - you can treat it like any other folder on the PC. Displays the current Wifi signal strength. The readout uses negative numbers so -40dBm is better (stronger) than -50dBm I found when I photographed the B2 - it is so small it looked lost in a room setting or alongside other audio equipment. NAS stands for Network Attached Storage - that basically means that the music on the Brennan B2 hard disk can be seen by other devices on the same network.