Has anyone got one of these or something similar?

https://brennan.co.uk/pages/b3-overview

My wife wants me to get rid of all my CD’s (around 600) to free up some space. I don’t want to lose the music, but not bothered about the physical discs.

Would be grateful for any real life experience of the Brennan, or similar things. The one requirement is that it must be able to play over my Sonos speakers.

Thanks
Nick

P.S. I know I could stream the vast majority through Spotify, Apple Music, etc but not all of it and the ability of my CD collection to surprise me with I didn’t remember I had that moments is important and not something you get from streaming services.

I too like my, now virtual, CD connection, as it gives me something to flick through to find something to listen to, rather than being faced with having to find something from a choice of the entire world of music like Spotify does.

All my CDs (300ish) were ripped as MP3s (took ages, but you plough through them whilst doing something else). I then stuck them on an SD card and stuck that in my phone. I can listen via headphones/bluetooth, or stream via Chromecast.

If Sonos can play ‘local’ files, I’d do something like that.

I’ve all mine on a PC and I play them (not very hifi, I’m sure) through the Alexa-thingy using mymediaforalexa (subs costs about a fiver per year I think)

Im pretty sure the Brennan uses a lossless codec to get pretty good hifi rendition. Obviously this will be dependant on your amp and speakers. Its streets ahead of ripping a cd to mp3 and then using bluetooth to cast it to a device. This may or may not be important to you.

When i saw a friends Brennan, it took quite a while to rip a cd, and then it did a rather longwinded process to convert it to its storage. As it has to do this for every cd you own then it can take a really long time to transfer them all even if you are waiting with a new cd for the instant it finishes.

What happens when the Brennan unit fails in a few years (which all electronics do), do you lose all your files or is there backup options?

The one requirement is that it must be able to play over my Sonos speakers.

My old CD collection was ripped and sits on a USB key (and backed up to the cloud) plugged into my WiFi router. Sonos then accesses it as a file share.

Rip them to your NAS?
Store them on some cloud storage?
Definitely make sure you have backups.
600 CDs will take a while to rip. You can do that with most any computer and a CD reader. You don’t need a Brennan. They always look like something to dupe old folks who don’t know computers can do sound these days.

What format you rip them to is up to you. WAV or some other lossless format will maintain all the bits but you won’t hear any improvement beyond high rate mp3 or AAC. 🤷🏻‍♂️ maybe for peace of mind rip an ‘original’ to WAV and then convert them in a batch to mp3 in the cloud and on a USB stick for convenience and portability?

Edit. My SO put all their CDs in a big case with CD pockets in it to keep in the car. Took up a lot less space than the original cases. Then when we moved to CD-less cars the discs went to charity. I skipped the case bit by just ripping my discs and giving them away. Definitely reduced the physical clutter.

You don’t need a Brennan. They always look like something to dupe old folks who don’t know computers can do sound these days.

This.

Point above about backup and portability of your music collection once you have ripped it is very important.

I don’t know why you wouldn’t just rip them to a format of your choice and then copy them / play them on devices of your choice.

YouTube music account, you have free storage if up to 40,000 tracks (I think).

I ripped most if my CDs and uploaded them a few years ago. Took quite a while!!

I ripped all mine Lossless FLAC to a NAS about 10 years ago using my computer, did it over the course of a couple of months.

They’re still sitting on there accessible from Sonos but they never get used apart from the very rare occasion that the internet is down (maybe twice), I just use Apple Music for everything. I can’t tell any difference in quality between Apple or my own files except the volume levelling is more consistent on my own stuff.

I do miss flicking through a rack of CDs sometimes, but my CD collection hasn’t really grown in size for the last 10 years so it’s a bit out of date.

If you own the CD, you might as well just get onto PirateBay or whatever and download the files if you can find decent quality rips. The artist has been paid, you’re not depriving them of income, just saving yourself a lot of time repeating a job that someone else has already done. Put them on a NAS for use at home and put backups into Dropbox or similar cloud backup.

I’ve ripped most of mine to apple lossless but kept the CDs ( well over a thousand) in slim plastic wallets and thrown away the jewel cases. Take significantly less room. I still like to see the artwork and info sometimes and there’s still a lot of stuff not on streaming services.
Got a job lot of sleeves from here https://www.t3lshop.co.uk/shop/cd-storage-161c1.html

I have tried ripping CDs and downloading torrents of them and I have never found a “front end” that could manage them correctly. iTunes, MediaMonkey all became a right mess once you had a significant number of tracks.

Don’t really know what you mean @gobuchul

I ripped 1000+ cds to Apple Lossless in iTunes and the sit happily on our NAS. iTunes on a laptop handles them perfectly, although the main playback is done through iPhone Apps into my hifi.

All work perfectly and can sort and display full albums and covers etc without problem.

I’ve also just got all the original cds out of storage and put them back on display in a corner of the room. Not really sure why tbh, but I do like the look and feel of cds. Probably an age thing.

Don’t really know what you mean  @gobuchul

Neither do I. If you are on Windows then Media Player does a pretty decent job. Even tidies up the file names for you. It’s not made obvious but it’s still there, even in Windows 10/11.

I have tried ripping CDs and downloading torrents of them and I have never found a “front end” that could manage them correctly. iTunes, MediaMonkey all became a right mess once you had a significant number of tracks.

I kind of get what you mean.

My original rips are all well labelled.
When iTunes Cloud (or whatever the predecessor to Apple Music is) gor hold of a copy of them to make available in the cloud its results were a mixed bag. Despite my files having artwork, sensible filenames, and good metadata ‘Apple Music’ mangled a fair number. Some were identified as tracks from compilations. Others as tracks from different albums. It was hilariously AI.

After a while of irritation and annoyance I just gave up and went with Apple Music streaming.

The only weird consequence now is that on occasion I’ll find I have an ‘album’ with my original rips and the tracks from the Apple Music version.

My ‘originals’ all still exist on my NAS. Rarely played.

Edit. If you rip your CDs with any competent ripper you will end up with well labelled files with good metadata and likely good artwork. If that’s your goal then 👌

So I think I get the NAS concept (took a while) but I am in the dark on what software I need to get from the CD to the NAS via my computer. It used to be I tunes, but that is dead now.

what computer have you got? On Windows, https://www.exactaudiocopy.de/ is probably the best I think. I’d be out of date on Macs.

I-tunes still works, I’m ripping 200 CDs at the moment.

I rip them to lossless and then copy the I-tunes library onto a NAS.

This gives me a backup and also allows software to play it through apps from the server.

I am in the dark on what software I need to get from the CD to the NAS via my computer.

iTunes, maybe it’s called Music or Apple Music these days.

dBPowerAmp is still going. That used to be good.

There’s probably some built in Windows software that will do the job well enough.

Hi, I found this thread when searching for info about the Brennan. I have copied a few of my CDs onto my laptop with iTunes. My idea was to store them on a MyCloudHome which is 8TB and then use playlists on my iPad to play music through a Sonos speaker. I’ve had a problem recently, because I also back up my iPad to the laptop. I’m now getting a message that I can’t back up the iPad as the storage is getting full. The C drive has only about 3 GB left. I’ve only copied about 10 CDs and the music storage doesn’t look very full, but the app storage has quite a lot in it.I’ve read that I could have the CDs on an external hard drive like the MyCloud and delete them from the laptop, but when I look at the iTune files I can’t tell what is on there as the thumbnails all look the same. I don’t want to delete them and find I’ve lost everything. I have 2 questions. How can I tell what these files are? And, also are the backups of my iPad taking up a lot of storage in the Apps part? I’m not very experienced in all this, so I’m a bit out of my depth. Advice would be much appreciated. Thank you.