Alternative to Brennan hard drive

[Gaz37]

I'm thinking that perhaps I need to get into this century/millenium and get all my olde fashioned CDs transfered onto one of these new fangled digital storage thingies but have no idea how best to do so.

I've seen a gizmo made my Brennan that allows you to transfer your CDs onto it's hard drive via a built in CDP but it looks bloody expensive for what it is plus it has a built in amp which I don't really want, or need.

I want to be able to access any album and/or track easily and I want the playback to be as good as the original CD plus it needs to be analogue output as I don't really want a seperate DAC, just to make things more difficult I want to spend as little as possible

What are my options please.

Thanks

 

[bigboss]

You can do it yourself, with a laptop with a CD drive and a NAS drive.

http://www.alphr.com/realworld/362734/the-rapid-way-to-rip-a-cd-collection

Or you can employ services like this:

http://www.ripcaster.co.uk/node/6/

 

[bigboss]

You can do it yourself, with a laptop with a CD drive and a NAS drive.

http://www.alphr.com/realworld/362734/the-rapid-way-to-rip-a-cd-collection

Or you can employ services like this:

http://www.ripcaster.co.uk/node/6/

 

[paulkebab]

a Western Digital TV (WDTV) about £65 from PC World or Currys, and a big hard drive. Everything I have is ripped onto it in full-fat WAV format using EAC (Exact Audio Copy) although the WDTV will play pretty much any format of audio and video. Its not the fastest thing around though, and you'll need a screen of some sort (I got a cheapo from Tesco) to see what's going on (HDMI and analogue video out). Audio is by way of composite or optical so no immediate need for a DAC. Its network capable too so anything on it is playable on any audio/video device on the same network. It also has a USB socket on the front for your pen drives. CNET reviewed it as VLC for your TV/Hi-Fi and I agree as I've ripped all my DVD's and BD's to another drive and all plays perfectly.

 

[Frank Harvey]

If you're looking to bypass PCs as the Brennan does, the Innuos Zen Mini (1TB) is a great place to start. Take it out the box, plug it into the mains, plug it into your network, and you're ready to start feeding it CDs that will be ripped to FLAC. It'll get the metadata, album artwork etc, and you'll then be able to stream it anywhere the house (to a system that can see the streamer on your network of course). Alternatively, it has an analogue (and USB) output so you can plug it directly into any system and control it via your laptop/PC or suitable phone/tablet app.

 

[gowiththeflow]

The original Brennan machine was awful. Only ripping CD'd to mp3 and with a clunky, dated method of cataloging them.

Their newer B2 rips to FLAC but is so far behind the drag curve on cataloging and metadata (e.g. lack of album art etc,). I've no idea how good it is, but personally I'd avoid it.

There are other all-in-one alternatives, even if a little more expensive (e.g. the newer Cocktail Audio X12 & X40).