Transferring music from Brennan B2 to play in car

[richard cherry]

Good afternoon all. First time poster here. I've had my Brennan for three years, and recently I bought a new car that has all sorts of media outlets I can plug stuff into it. I would like to transfer the 6,700 songs I have on my Brennan so that I can play them in my car. 

Being somewhat of a technophobe, can someone help with this? Am I best transferring onto an SD card, or USB? What size GB would I need to buy to take 6,700 songs? Any pointers / links to the best kind of SD or USB? Is it a straight forward procedure to transfer them?

The Brennan has an 8GB SD card in the side of it. What is this for?

Thanks in advance. 

[Peter Lowham]

Hi Richard,

The size of the medium card/device will depend on what format you have used to transfer your music collection on the B2.  In terms of brands, I only buy from reputable suppliers such as Argos in the UK or Best Buy in the USA.  I avoid Amazon and the web offerings because much of this stuff is absolute rubbish and will cause much pain.  If the device is cheaper than a reputable supplier then is is usually fake.  There are quite a few threads in this forum where many problems are reported and often it boils down to a cheap USB device.

In terms of device size:

If the collection is uncompressed & stored in '.wav' format then your collection will require about 250GB, so a 500GB device would be advisable.

If the collection is compressed to '.flac' format the the collection will require about 150GB, so a 256GB device would do the job.

If the collection is compressed to '.mp3 256Kb' format then the collection will require about 50GB so a 64GB device would be adequate.

If the collection is compressed to '.mp3 128Kb' format then the collection will require about 30GB so a 64GB device would be adequate.

If you post here the 'Settings & Status' screen from the WebUI, this would give an exact count of the tracks in each format, so a more accurate estimate could be given.

With regard to the type of device to use, that depends on your situation.  For example, I have three cars, but only two have the 'SD card' slot, whereas all three have a USB port, so I use USB sticks.

Also, you need to check that your vehicle will play the format(s) that you intend to use.  Again, in my case only two of the cars will play '.flac' whereas all three will play '.mp3' format, so I use the B2's 'Export mp3s' function.

The process to transfer the music to a USB device is fairly straight-forward.

1.  From the front panel 'Main Menu' --> 'USb Menu' --> 'Export C'  -- this copies all of your music folders to a device plugged into the USC C port on the B2

or

2.  If your collection is in '.mp3' format you can use 'Main Menu' --> 'Playlist Menu' --  'Export mp3s'  but first you will have to create a playlist than contains all of the artist/ albums that you want to transfer.

Regards,

Peter.

[richard cherry]

Many thanks Peter.

 

The WebUI says ‘7189 tracks, 506 albums, 0 WAV, 7092 FLAC, 39 MP3, 58 ACC’

[lesliebr...@gmail.com]

Hi Ric. The 8GB SD in the side of the B2 is where the operating system is stored as opposed to the HDD, where the music is stored.

[richard cherry]

Thank you for clearing that up. 

[Peter Lowham]

Hi Richard,

From those stats that you have provided, your music collection as it stands will require around about 145 - 150GB of space.

Regards,

Peter.

[richard cherry]

Magic. Thank you so much. 

[Jasper Warwick]

One thing to check; is there a maximum number of files your car's entertainment system will handle? My 2016 Audi has a limit of 10,000 tracks so I had to prune quite heavily my 16,000 track library. It cause great confusion for a few weeks before I found out about this limit, I could not work out why I had artists and albums listed but no tracks.

Another think to consider is have you configured the ID Tags on your library? The B2 does not use them but most other systems (like Sonos) do. 

Jasper.

[richard cherry]

Hi Jasper. My track list is just over 7000 songs so the cars media should be able to handle that many. 

[Bob West]

Wouldn't the thumb drive (USB) have to be formatted to Fat 32 first?   

[PMB]

Hi Bob,

It appears most USB sticks come FAT32 formatted. The B2 will soon tell you if it is not.

Paul

Brennan Support.