B2 Problems

[david....@btinternet.com]

I have owned a B2 since November 2016. It has been trouble free. it holds 11,965 tracks, in 782 albums with 376 artists. I have just noticed that it no longer looks for album information online. This must have been a recent change. (The software version is B2 dated 21/07/2020) Has anybody noticed this?

This week I took delivery of a new J2, which uses version B2B. Firstly I can "export to C" on the old B2 but can't then "import USB C" on the new B2. It goes through the motions but no tracks appear (although space is taken on the drive). Can anybody help?

Although the new B2 is connected to my home network and the internet (the clock appears) I'm not able to use the internet for, say, radio, CD lookup, software update. The app for the iPhone is unable to find the new B2. Has anybody had similar problems with a new B2?

Thanks in advance for any help.

David

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

Hi David,

Can we have a bit more information please

Your old B2, does it have a hard disk and if so what size.

Does its SD card stick out of the side?

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I assume when you say " new J2 " you mean B2?

How long have you left the import USB C running for on the new B2? How long did the Export to USB C take on the old B"? -  they should take similar time.

Have you run a Scan Disk after import?

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"Although the new B2 is connected to my home network and the internet (the clock appears)"

I take it you have set up the new B2 on your home internet OK and you can see the IP address (rather than just the clock) on the front display.

If so can you (using your phone's browser) connect to that IP address and get the Brennan UI up in the browser rather than using the app.

With the above information we should be able to provide more help.

[david....@btinternet.com]

Dear Fred,

Thanks for your help.

Firstly the old B2 is 1,000g and does have a SD card sticking out of the side.

Sorry about the typo  - the new one is also a B2.

I didn't time either the export or the import as both were done overnight.

I have run the Scan Disk on the new B2 with some success. 9,928 tracks were discovered in 623 albums with 242 artists. However this is short of the 11,965 tracks on the old B2 with 782 albums 376 artists. After the Scan Disk the new Brennan spent a lengthy period compressing FLAC files.

Information on the old B2 shows 11,489 FLAC files, 372 MP3 files and strangely 52 WAV files (To my knowledge I have never used the WAV format) 

I can see the IP address for the new Brennan and will look at that next and try to work which files did not transfer.

As well as the Brennan export facility I have also backed up the music files on the old B2 to an external hard drive using Windows and cut and paste. These files work OK with my Sonos system.

I thought that buying a second B2 would be really easy to set up but it isn't!

Again, thanks for your interest.

David  

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

Hi David

Lets see if we can unpack a few things from what you have said. (My B2 is an old style one like yours).

1)  Information on the old B2 shows 11,489 FLAC files, 372 MP3 files and strangely 52 WAV files (To my knowledge I have never used the WAV format)

When you rip a CD on a B2 the file format that is created for the ripped CD is "WAV" . Your B2 can play WAV files which are uncompressed (and large)

Using the front screen and the control knob you can select (Compression - Select FLAC, MP3-128k, MP3-256k or none (WAV). FLAC is default). So after you have finished ripping and the B2 is idle it will start compressing to FLAC (a lossless format). The fact that you still have WAV files means that either you have not left your old B2 idle long enough for it to finish or that these files are corrupt.

2) Have you run a Scan Disk on your old B2 recently? Please do so then "Save" the reboot the old B2 and confirm that the Old B2 still says "11,489 FLAC files, 372 MP3 files and 52 WAV files" [If there are different results STOP here and tell us]

3) if (2) went OK then can we please try a new Backup of the OLD B2. Please format the USB device you use for this backup {NOTE THIS WILL DELETE EVERYTHING ON IT!] using the Front display an Knob (Format USB A/C -

Formats USB drive in USB  A/C - uses FAT32 - useful to convert a NTFS disk for use with B2 - WARNING deletes everything on the external device). Then ( Export to C -This is the recommended backup if you don't need JB7 compatibility. Does a backup of the entire music collection to the drive in USB C and is incremental for subsequent uses of Export to C. The music is organised artist->album->track. Use in conjunction with Import from USB A/C)

We Now should have a complete copy of all the stuff on your old B2 on the USB device. You could plug this into your PC and look at them all if you wish to. 

4) If you are happy with step 3 then I would recommend reformatting your new B2's HDD [NOTE -all music will be deleted], again using the front display and Knob - (Format HDD - Reformats the internal hard disk - everything deleted - you will be asked to confirm. More thorough than delete music - [NB NAS must be stopped first]).

5) Using the Front display and Knob - then reload your music from the USB device - (Import USB C -Load music from a drive in USB C. Ideally the music will be organised as artist->album->track. (Used by iTunes for example))

For guidance using the Front scree and Knob see the Brennan Web pages (https://www.brennan.co.uk/itemcontent.php/content/Menus).

If you time step 3 and 5 they should be similar.

Once the load is complete check that your new B2 is reporting the same file size information as the old), check that your NEW B2 is set to FLAC compression and then start a "compress NOW" to convert the remaining WAV files. once the B2 stops flashing press the "Stop" button for 2 seconds to save everything. Then reboot and see what it says you have as music.

Hopefully this will sort things out.  However If all your old B2 musick does not make it to the new B2 (qand therefore by implication it is not on the memory stick then you have a corrupt file or two in your old B2 that may be causing problems) then we need to try and clean up your old B2. say by (Cleanup -Removes empty albums, hidden files and any files beginning with '._' (dot underscore). Run Settings->Scan Disk after.) or even more nuclear (Repair HDD -

Disk repair function. Can be used to fix persistent HDD Read Only but the recommended solution is to backup and reformat. WARNING Does not work on 2TB drive. May delete a lot of music) BUT before resorting to this come back and discuss things with this forum. 

Finally in step 3 above please DO NOT overwrite an B2 backup that may contain a good copy of your music - you said you had your music on your PC for the Sonos (( "As well as the Brennan export facility I have also backed up the music files on the old B2 to an external hard drive using Windows and cut and paste. These files work OK with my Sonos system.")) - (I have this too done using the NAS function) - so you may have a complete good backup BUT please be careful. There is nothing worse than having to reload music from CD.

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Just as a second thought as you have a copy of all your music on your PC (assuming this is complete - have you checked in detail?) you could start NAS on your new B2 and simply cut and paste music from your PC to the new B2, skipping files where it finds these are already present. 

Also your NEW B2 went into compression mode immediately after the import because it detected the 52 uncompressed WAV files. 

Fred

[david....@btinternet.com]

Dear Fred,

Sorry about the long silence - I have been trying to solve the problem!

I tried Scan Disk on the old B2 without a result. Following your suggestion I then tried Compress Now. The result was that my 52 WAV tracks became 52 AAC tracks otherwise everything remained the same. Since the old B2 has given no trouble I was reluctant to touch it any further. I went through the process of backing up the old B2 again using Export to C and using Import USB C on the new B2. (After deleting all music on it) Again 2,000+ tracks disappeared.   

As I said I have my music files stored on an external hard drive. I transferred these to the external drive that I use for backing up the old B2. I formatted the hard drive on the new B2 and used the Import USB C to transfer the music files to the new B2. Approximately 7,000 of the 11,000+ tracks were successfully transferred. On this occasion the omissions weren't random and I could see where the transfer had stopped. I deleted all of the transferred music from the external drive and tried Import USB C again. The remaining tracks transferred and thus the music on the new B2 is identical to the old and the new B2 has been playing happily for several hours. The problem seems to be with the number of tracks being transferred. Anyway it's all OK now but my findings might be useful for another customer has a similar problem.

Thank you for your suggestions and help. Hopefully no more problems.

David

[PMB]

Hi David,

Have you got the latest software on both of the B2's? We made some changes to the Export to C software as it was crashing out before completing the Export. So update the software and try another Export to C from the old B2.

Paul

Brennan Support.