Transfer to iPhone

[irbr...@gmail.com]

I would like to transfer the entire contents of my B2 music to my laptop and then transfer a subset of that music to an iPhone (the subset will be determined once on the laptop). Don't really want to set up a playlist. Also some/all the music is in FLAC format which will not play. 

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

Hi irdr

Yes this is a common requirement (to a phone or for the car)

First of all getting it off your B2

1) You could export the contents of your B2 to a USB Thumb drive/stick or HDD and then load this into your computer (the USB device would then also be a backup for your B2)

2) You could turn on the NAS capability of the B2 ( > Settings > Maintenance >  Start NAS ) from the front panel controls

then follow the instructions here https://www.brennan.co.uk/itemcontent.php/content/Sonos

which allows you to see the content of your B2 from your PC/Mac. 

3) copy the content of the B2 to a local area on your PC/Mac.

Second converting to  Mp3

You are correct while FLAC the best compression format because it is lossless,  most phone and cars want the music further compress to the lossy Mp3 format. 

Once on your PC/Mac, there are utilities such as https://www.dbpoweramp.com/ 

that people here have used to convert to Mp3.

However please also note that you will run into difficulties with music "tags" that phones and cars expect to have embedded in the music files. The Mp3 files will play OK of cause but the "Apps" use/need the tags to display the content of what you have uploaded.

To me "Tags" are still a bit of a black art, and I have only just begun to explore them. However people here have used a free pen source utility called " mp3tag" https://www.mp3tag.de/en/

to add these.

hope this helps

Fred

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

PS

The B2 is starting to get support for Mp3 and generating tags but I am not convinced that this is of production quality yet. have a look through the menu options here to see what is possible using the front panel of he B2

https://www.brennan.co.uk/itemcontent.php/content/Menus

Fred