Questions about B2

[john duncan]

Hi all new to this, I am going to buy a B2. I have a collection of over 1000 CD's, so should I opt for the 2T, also if you use an external cd player to rip cd`s to the B2 do you need an expensive player to maintain quality ? Would appreciate some advice

  Thanks  Jock Duncan

[Shawn Rosvold]

Hi Jock,

I ordered the 2TB B2. I probably have way more capacity than I need:

20210 tracks in 1405 albums 643 artists

0 WAV 20129 FLAC 60 MP3 21 AAC

Capacity 2000.00G Used 533.82Gb

But, I seem to be constantly finding new stuff to add, so maybe I'll eventually fill it up, but not likely. And who knows what the Brennan capabilities might expand to in the future. Movies? Bitcoin mining? Photos?

Shawn

[Mark Fishman]

Jock,

the quality of a CD is not affected by ripping as long as the bits that you get off the disc are the same as the bits that were put on the disc when it was made. (I know that some so-called audiophiles claim they can hear a difference between two bit-identical files that came from the same CD but were made using two different drives, or sometimes two different pieces of software ripping the same CD from the same drive. To be blunt: if you don't tell them what hardware and software was used, they can't tell them apart in any reality-based fashion. But if it makes them happy, I won't argue about that.)

In other words, you aren't playing the CD, capturing the analog waveform and re-converting it. You are reading the bits off the disc and putting them in a file. The price of the CD drive is not relevant: there are good ones at low and high prices, and there are bad ones at low and high prices. Most are fine for that purpose.

[Shawn Rosvold]

Sorry, forgot to answer your CD question. Mark Fishman nailed it. I use a little LG cd player as an external drive. I think I paid about $75 USD for it. It works fine and is small enough that I can travel with it.

[Peter Lowham]

Hi Jock,

If cost isn't a factor then I would go for the 2TB model.  I estimate that your 1000 CDs would probably require about 300GB if ripped in '.flac' format.  So the 2TB unit would give you more flexibility when you get used to the B2. For example,  if you decided to use 'mirror' mp3 files to play on other non-flac devices then that would require another 100GB at your collection size.

Shawn mentioned possible new features above which is a good case.  He mentioned photographs, but the Brennan can store and process photos already, although it is not widely publicised.  I have a few thousand photos stored on my B2.

@Shawn; if you want to see the photo section type in '<yourB2IPaddress>/jbv.html' and you will see a mainly blank web page.  But you can easily upload photos to the B2 using the menus provided.  

Attached is a screenshot from my B2 photo store.  (The photograph is of a dog, a young cat and a parrot playing together in Zimbabwe).

Regards,

Peter.

[Jim Jacobus]

Get the 2TB. I have over 1000 CDs and figured I would not have to be concerned about running of of space. It's an upfront cost, but good in the long term.

I have an external CD reader I got on Amazon (Roofull - About $26 USD). It's faster than the internal CD ripper of the B2. If it fails, it's easy to replace.