The Brennan B2

[Sir Velo]

This is my impression as well. Eg. No field for composer.

Digitising a large (several thousand) CD collection would not for me be worth the effort and man hours.

Not even for the sometimes quite considerable improvement in sound quality if one rips losslessly and routes through a high quality DAC, or the considerable ease at which one can retrieve any piece of music in one's collection almost instantaneously?

[gurnemanz]

Not even for the sometimes quite considerable improvement in sound quality if one rips losslessly and routes through a high quality DAC, or the considerable ease at which one can retrieve any piece of music in one's collection almost instantaneously?

Maybe ...

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I must say I would find doing that quite difficult

[ChrisBennell]

It also has the facility of Internet Radio; but then so does a laptop connected to your Hi Fi (possibly through a DAC). I agree the facilty to rip CDs automatically to Flac is nothing special - I can already do that with my desktop PC. And the Brennan is expensive!

But actually do I find that having the physical CDs on my shelves suits me. So when I download music files (Flac) from Presto Classical (for example) I usually end up creating a CD!

[Stunsworth]

Digitising a large (several thousand) CD collection would not for me be worth the effort and man hours.

That's exactly what I did, and it's been well worth while. I'm not suggesting that everyone would see the benefit, but personally I've not played a CD (other than to rip it) for years - and I've found it much easier to find a recording on the computer than search among CDs, many of which were stacked two deep.

[richardfinegold]

I don't know what the Brennan costs. However, there are many music servers that rip CDs to an internal HD, have a DAC, play every format conceivable, and offer TuneIn for quality internet radio. I suggest you look at Bluesound, because it does all of the above, will play High Resolution files, is affordable, and can be expanded to a whole home playback

[Dave2002]

That's exactly what I did, and it's been well worth while. I'm not suggesting that everyone would see the benefit, but personally I've not played a CD (other than to rip it) for years - and I've found it much easier to find a recording on the computer than search among CDs, many of which were stacked two deep.

I'm in-between on this issue. A few years ago I <strikeout>digitised</strikeout>ripped *** a lot of my CDs and played them through a Logitech player from my hard drive. I also used an iPad with an App to control it all. Since then various things have happened. i had the intention of putting almost all the CDs onto hard drives, and running a server locally, but a few drive and network failures made me more wary of that. I may revisit that in the future, but sometimes life just seems too short.

I have bought CDs from Amazon, some of which get AutoRipped. I also have some downloads, and some seem to have migrated into iTunes. Quite often I can't be bothered to play a CD, so just use the download file - but there are a few things to watch out for. Some of the tracks don't always play in order, which is a nuisance, plus gapless playing doesn't always work, which is a pain on some CDs. Lastly, I find that sometimes the sound quality with the CD in the my player just blows away any readily available rip.

I know that getting a good rip, or even an audiophile quality download should give results as good or better than a CD, but this doesn't always happen. Also, some recordings are inherently compromised - probably older ones which may still be enjoyable to listen to, so for those convenience sometimes favours the download or ripped version, though sometime convenience also works in the opposited direction. Put a CD in a player and the CD "just plays"!

I'd still like to know whether there is anything like a common standard for labelling tracks/albums etc. which works with most players, and can be exported and used in different software players. Perhaps there isn't.

***edited to satisfy a somewhat pedantic reader - see later posts!

[gurnemanz]

That's exactly what I did, and it's been well worth while. I'm not suggesting that everyone would see the benefit, but personally I've not played a CD (other than to rip it) for years - and I've found it much easier to find a recording on the computer than search among CDs, many of which were stacked two deep.

Next big retirement project, maybe, after scanning in a whole load of slides - which definitely was worth the effort

One thing that makes it less necessary for me is that I do have an obsessively well-maintained database of all CD contents which makes it easy to find items, add notes, lyrics, pictures, web links etc. There are a plethora of properties and categories which enable you to tailor things to your exact requirements. For example, as a big lieder fan, I have added a new field called "accompanist". You can make up your own data queries, if you are so inclined: Eg Schumann Lieder female, Dylan tracks covered, clarinet trios, jazz piano solo, Vienna Phil symphonies - great fun, but I still have to stand up, retrieve the CD and insert it.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

A few years ago I digitised a lot of my CDs

Good grief! Do you have analogue CDs?
They must be worth a fortune!

[MrGongGong]

but I still have to stand up, retrieve the CD and insert it.

I think if you continue to do this
and walk about outside as much as possible
you stand a bigger chance of having a long retirement

[jayne lee wilson]

I'm always in two, or several, minds about this.... just recently my Knappertsbusch Bruckner obsession led to the purchase of several CDs unavailable as downloads from Orfeo, Urania, King, Tahra....
And a couple of Japanese Rogner specials.... so I'm feeling a little overrun again - CDs on the work desk - as the latest cabinetry addition fills up....
Happy downloader since 2011, they still only run into the hundreds, almost all 24-bit... and I've plugged in various USB sonic upgrades to DAC and Mac....

Right now I love CD again, just because I'm revelling in those Bruckner sets so much, but more importantly - I use two late 1990s CD transports, a Krell and a Marantz, both carefully maintained or customised, and I simply love using them, what they do and how they sound with a much newer Dac, too much to give up on the disc playback, or rip them - the latter labour never appealed, despite an early enjoyment of HD downloads themselves, and all the learning curves associated with them....

So I just go with the flow.... wherever the musical instincts lead me...

Brennan? I'm sure there's much better value and functionality out there.... the problem, as with so much else, is there's too MUCH choice!
Decide on a budget, ask a dealer ...

[Stunsworth]

I don't know what the Brennan costs. However, there are many music servers that rip CDs to an internal HD, have a DAC, play every format conceivable, and offer TuneIn for quality internet radio. I suggest you look at Bluesound, because it does all of the above, will play High Resolution files, is affordable, and can be expanded to a whole home playback

I've no experience of either the Brennan or the Bluesound, but one thing that would worry me would be the quality of the meta-data.

When I ripped my CDs (I think there were around 3500) I found that non-classical was for the most part ok, usually all I needed to change was the genre for a few titles. However with classical the quality of the meta-data was much poorer and I was often changing album titles and artists to make sure the performers and composers were correct (and therefore searchable). I'd be worried that a totally automated system wouldn't fare any better than iTunes.

[MrGongGong]

I know i've probably said this before
BUT
if you want the highest quality all you need to do is get a computer (more or less any one will do though up until now Macbooks would be a good choice ..... 2nd hand Mac Mini would be perfect) and buy a RME external soundcard.
One of these is probably what was in the studio where your music was mastered and probably was one of these (or something equivalent) in the recording session as well.

http://www.rme-audio.de/en/index.php

[Dave2002]

Next big retirement project, maybe, after scanning in a whole load of slides - which definitely was worth the effort

One thing that makes it less necessary for me is that I do have an obsessively well-maintained database of all CD contents which makes it easy to find items, add notes, lyrics, pictures, web links etc. There are a plethora of properties and categories which enable you to tailor things to your exact requirements. For example, as a big lieder fan, I have added a new field called "accompanist". You can make up your own data queries, if you are so inclined: Eg Schumann Lieder female, Dylan tracks covered, clarinet trios, jazz piano solo, Vienna Phil symphonies - great fun, but I still have to stand up, retrieve the CD and insert it.

Not sure if there are any players which would have an integrated database like yours, which would be useful. However, you could use your database to locate a unique code for each CD, and then use that to access the ripped CD in your software player.

[Dave2002]

I know i've probably said this before
BUT
if you want the highest quality all you need to do is get a computer (more or less any one will do though up until now Macbooks would be a good choice ..... 2nd hand Mac Mini would be perfect) and buy a RME external soundcard.
One of these is probably what was in the studio where your music was mastered and probably was one of these (or something equivalent) in the recording session as well.

http://www.rme-audio.de/en/index.php

The RMEs don't look particularly consumer friendly. Which one(s) would you recommend?

Also, would they (one or more) be able to do multi channel if required - i.e. surround sound? I suspect out of scope for most domestic listeners.