Questions for someone looking to buy a Brennan B2 (when back in stock!)

[Christian Sunderland]

Apologies if these have been asked and answered before but I couldn't find through 'search'!

1.) Will I be able to bypass the internal amplifier by connecting to an external amplifier via HDMI or optic cable?

2.) I assume that once correctly setup, I simply put in a CD and give it time to rip (unless it's really clever and can play at the same time)?

3.) It only rips standard CDs and not 5.1 surround music DVD's/SACD's?

Thank you in advance.

Christian

[Peter Lowham]

Hi Christian,

In answer to your queries:

Q1.  Yes, you will have 3.5mm, optical cable and HDMI to choose from.

Q2.  Yes, the CD will rip automatically after insertion.  But you should first connect your B2 to the internet so that the B2 can look up the CDDB data to enable the tag data to be downloaded.  The B2 can rip and play at the same time, but the general advice in the forum is not to do this as it can put a lot of demands on the B2.  The B2 is happiest when it is doing one major task at a time, and ripping is a major task.  The compression phase is automatically limited to when the B2 is in 'Standby' mode.

Q3.  I'm not totally sure on this, but I believe that the B2 only fully rips standard CDs.  There have been reports in the forum about ripping failing and the reason for the problem has been that the CD has something like a video section included in it.

But perhaps some other forum members with more knowledge than I can respond to this last query. 

Regards,

Peter.

[Daniel Taylor]

The B2 will not rip DVDs or SACDs.

[Warren Knauer]

For original poster...

Q1.  If using the optical/Toslink, note that it somewhat uniquely shares the 3.5mm analog output and so you may need to buy the correct cable to use optical from that connection.

Q2. Many people find an ethernet connection to be less problematic than WiFi.

Q3. Daniel Taylor's input comment be misinterpreted.  If you have SACDs that have a standard "red book" CD layer, you can scan that into the B2.  I have done that with 2 titles I have.  The B2 will not read the SACD's DSD layer or whatever that's called.  Also, whether the SACD has multi-channel or only stereo has been irrelevant for me.

Regards,

Warren

[Christian Sunderland]

Thank you all for your comments.  I am sold once the T2 version is back in stock!

Christian 

[Daniel Taylor]

Warren,

Thanks for clarifying about SACDs.  You are quite right of course.