Potential New Owner

[iain tennant]

Hi everyone
Since last November I have become increasingly frustrated and dissallusioned with my current sonos system. It refuses to index from my western digital NAS drive. It seems the new WD Os 5 is not compatible with sonos and no amount of support calls to either company have resolved the issue.
So, I am looking at a Brennan system to replace it. My committment to sonos is extensive (15 speakers), so it is with a heavy heart and a dented bank balance that I travel this route.

A few questions please.
All of my cd’s are backed up in Flac format on a drive. So, rather than re ripping them again, is it an easy process to copy from my back up file to the Brennan HDD? Approx 33k tracks.

If I connect the Brennan wirelessly to my sonos speakers is the link reliable and good quality?

Can Brennan play different music in every room?

Thanks in advance for your help. I'm sure that there will be further questions

Cheers Iain

[fred.w....@gmail.com]

Hi Ian

The first thing you need to know is that the Brennan B2 does not use music tags. It does not mind them being in the music files and if they are there then using the B2's NAS, an external system (eg your Sonos) will be able to use them to build an index. So if your music files contain tags this will be fine.

The B2 stores and names its music holdings using a heirarchical directory system with the names of individual directories denoting Artist and Album names. The structure is outlined on the Brennan web site. This means that unless you use a clever naming system or make your own playlist catagories such as " genre" are not available.

So, provided you arrange your music into the required directory structure, loading it onto the B2 is simple, you write it to a FAT32 formatted USB disk (format the empty disk to FAT32 using the B2 to do this first) then plug the disk into the back of the B2 and load the music using the B2's import function.

FLAC compressed music files will be fine.

The B2  will connect to your house router using WiFi, it also has an Ethernet socket internally ( or you can use a USB ethernet adapter). But note to work properly the WiFi strength and quality needs to be good. Many of us prefer to use Ethernet to the B2 rather than WiFi.

You can use the B2 as a NAS and drive your music from the Sonos App 

And or

You can push music to your Sonos from the B2. The B2 will "see" all the Sonos speaker names you set up with your Sonos App and can send different music to each of these names at the same time. To get the same music to all the Sonos at once you need to send it to one then use the Sonos app to get this to go to the rest.

Please understand the connection between the B2 and Sonos is between the B2 and the Sonos system, not direct to Sonos speakers themselves.

For instance if you play a radio from the B2 the B2 will ask the Sonos to do this. So if you turn off the B2 without first stopping the radio, it will continue to play from the Sonos system. This means that the Sonos app will show you what the B2 is doing.

Hope this helps.

Fred

[harlond57]

I have a single Sonos speaker connected wirelessly to my B2.  I've never had any issue with the connection.  Worth noting, however, that I live in a 2-bedroom apartment and there's maybe 35 feet between the B2 and the Sonos.  While not perhaps all that applicable to your situation, my experience has been entirely positive.

[fred.w....@gmail.com]

Yes for most people the WiFi will be fine but it is important to understand that it is not the distance between the B2 and the Sonos that matters  it is the (distance) connection between the B2 and your house WiFi Router that matters as it is through this that the B2 sends stuff.

Fred

[PMB]

Hi starshi...,

Collective wisdom from others with many Sonos units is an Ethernet connection for the B2 produces more reliable results.

It sounds like you are familiar with using the Sonos app to pull music from the NAS hard drive, so suggest you use the B2 in NAS mode too.

The B2 uses FAT32 formatting and any USB storage device needs to be this format to work with the B2. So you will need to copy the 'flac' music to your computer, format the hard drive (2TB max capacity), copy the music onto the hard drive again, plug into the B2 and import.

Also the 'flac' music needs to be arranged by Artist then Album then Tracks, to store and display correctly on the B2.

Paul

Brennan Support.

[Mark Fishman]

Iain:

Take a look at https://community.wd.com/t/after-update-to-os-v5-not-working/258033

Read it THOROUGHLY.

Sonos requires MBv1 and WD have disabled it by default.

There's a workaround embedded on that page -- you might have to expand the section of the page with the downward pointing arrow to read it all.

Sonos should fix this properly by supporting newer versions of SMB as SMBv1 has been deprecated as insecure for YEARS (several). But they show no interest in doing so.

[Mark Fishman]

I can't type: where I typed " Sonos requires MBv1" that should be "SMBv1"

[Chris Jones]

Hi Iain

Your NAS should be fine with Sonos, I am using a WD NAS (WD Mycloud) and its works and indexes' fine a tad slow and I have nearly 1.5TB of music. By default WD OS5 uses SMB2,3 you might need to logon to the NAS and go into Settings\Network and make sure that it is set to SMB1,2,3 this way it should work with your Sonos  with later versions of Windows etc 

Hope this helps

Chris