Relatively Affordable Music Library and Player: The Brennan B2

[Flint]

I like how plexiglas looks after it is all setup. But I am not interested in putting the work into it to make it what I need since 100% of my non-critical listening is either through Amazons Echo and connected services or my phone.

All I am interested in replacing is my primary critical lisyening platform, so eese of use and cost are my main concerns.

 

[Deleted member 133]

I've tried to Google the guidelines, but nothing came up in the search. Perhaps my Google apparatus needs re-calibration.

It doesn't work much better using my DORO flip phone!

 

[Haywood]

I like how Plex looks after it is all setup. But I am not interested in putting the work into it to make it what I need.

Plex does all the work these days. If your music is tagged correctly, all you need do is point Plex at the drive.

Plex is only a lot of work if you start curating large video libraries that contain things for which there is not metadata (my wife's collection of K-Pop videos comes to mind).

 

[team_tsp]

I did many single-blind listening tests and made a ton of measurements, and I just didn't find the platform acceptable for my critical listening needs. As such, I never considered it a "reference-grade" solution. So, I used it as a casual listening solution for the convenience. At one point I had four player units in my home and they worked fairly well.

A moot question at this point since you're no longer using the Squeezebox ecosystem, but do you remember if the Squeezebox settings were configured to stream FLAC natively? And just curious, what did your measurements reveal?

 

[Flint]

A moot question at this point since you're no longer using the Squeezebox ecosystem, but do you remember if the Squeezebox settings were configured to stream FLAC natively? And just curious, what did your measurements reveal?

My measurements showed just a few things that made me think the fidelity wasn't 100%. First off, the S/N ratio when playing a computer generated sinewave as it came out of my preamp (thus using my preamp's DAC) was nearly 6dB lower than the same track burned to a CD played on my DVD player through my preamp's DAC. I also did a computer generated frequency response sweep and found the Squeezebox exhibited the start of a roll-off above about 18kHz while the DVD player just started showing roll-off at the edge of my measurement gear at just below 20kHz. They should have been identical, so my perceptions in the blind listening comparison tests were supported by the measurements suggesting one or the other was not truly reproducing exactly what was on the original file. Since there was much discussion online about the likelihood of transcoding on the fly with the Slim Server, I assumed it was the Squeezebox platform which was lacking the full fidelity. But I didn't pursue it because I really wanted that platform for non-critical listening of music throughout the household and I was fine with loading a CD in my main high end rig.

As for the settings, I tried everything anyone online suggested and while sometimes those settings broke everything - including a couple full uninstalls and reinstalled with all fresh setup choices - and I never got any better sound than my initial setup.

I don't do FLAC as back in the day it was VERY questionable and at that time I was ripping everything either with a fully-licensed (and quite pricey) professional Fraunhofer MP3 Variable Bit Rate encoder or Windows Media Player's WMA Lossless. My library was already about 2,500 CDs worth of content in those two formats, so going back and starting all over with FLAC (after the initial kinks were worked out and the lawsuits stopped) wasn't an option for me. I remember a few times reading online that Slim Server was incapable of streaming either of my formats, so if that was true, and I had no reason not to believe it wasn't true, then I could never listen to my huge library in native format anyway. I was okay with that once I exhausted all my attempts to make it right after about 6 months. I just lived with the idea it wasn't perfect and enjoyed my music around the house and on my rear porch.

That was my experience with the Squeezebox platform.

Once some core capabilities I had come to enjoy went away, the other annoyances grew more annoying, and Alexa started playing all my music plus pretty much everything else I could ever want, I gave up on Squeezebox altogether. If anyone wants them, I think I still have two of the original players and remotes. One of them is even Slim Devices branded.

 

[Flint]

By the way, if I were starting over with ripping everything today, I would definitely do it in the FLAC format.

I still have some of the early FLAC files many of my friends made for me using the first of the free encoders when they were trying to convince me I was insane, and a simple file comparison in WaveLab shows they are not identical to the original CD. That shouldn't be the case with modern FLAC encoders.

EDITED CST 9:15PM 22-05-2018

 

[heeman]

My whole world has now been crushed.........

 

[Flint]

Now... back to the original post:

I like the looks of this library player as it would operate identically to any CD player initially and over time my entire CD collection and any downloaded music will be stored on the HHD. If it gets to the point that I have a more complete library on this device than in my current library, I can just copy and replace all the tracks on my network share.

To be honest, since subscribing to Amazon Music and using it for most of my home non-critical music listening, the need for a network shared library has dwindled significantly. One of the few reasons I rip stuff these days is to get it onto my phone.

 

[mcad64]

Now... back to the original post:

I like the looks of this library player as it would operate identically to any CD player initially and over time my entire CD collection and any downloaded music will be stored on the HHD. If it gets to the point that I have a more complete library on this device than in my current library, I can just copy and replace all the tracks on my network share.

To be honest, since subscribing to Amazon Music and using it for most of my home non-critical music listening, the need for a network shared library has dwindled significantly. One of the few reasons I rip stuff these days is to get it onto my phone.

So if CD listening is your critical listening how do the specs on the Brennan measure up to your current cd player? Would that not be very important to you? If you aren't sharing on a network why bother spending the money on the Brennan. If you need to rip , why not use a good program to rip? What is being used in the Brennan to rip, I assume some Linux software? Sorry , I have lots of questions.
Lastly, if you are just looking for some cool new audio toy, I'm all for it!!

 

[team_tsp]

So if CD listening is your critical listening how do the specs on the Brennan measure up to your current cd player? Would that not be very important to you? If you aren't sharing on a network why bother spending the money on the Brennan. If you need to rip , why not use a good program to rip? What is being used in the Brennan to rip, I assume some Linux software? Sorry , I have lots of questions.
Lastly, if you are just looking for some cool new audio toy, I'm all for it!!

I'm also curious about how the Brennan's hardware measures.

For ripping my CDs, I use Exact Audio Copy which includes AccurateRip, which compares hashes of your rips to other people's rips and let's you know how many matches there are. It's a pretty cool way of letting you know you got a good rip.