Audiophiles hifi appreciation thread old and new

that's fair, but a little bit of effort in that now would pay dividends in 6 years when your thing fails and you have to rip everything again. The ripping itself is way more work than setting up a nas.

It’s a good point well made. And this would be my second rip, not an insignificant undertaking. Was banking on it being the last, but you reckon proprietary systems will just stop working eventually? Hadn’t considered this. NAS’s and their connected peripherals can’t be completely hassle free though surely.

Of course, they're computers, they will fail sooner or later. They're not like amps and speakers which last for decades.

Yeah NAS can be a bit fiddly, but using (for example) the Synology backup app on a Synology at least you can grab all your stuff again when it fails.

Unless you are planning on constantly buying a lot of CDs I wouldn't go with the all-in-one solution.

Rip everything once, properly and then you can go from just plugging a USB stick into a compatible player to something like Plex or whatever you want. Also makes it much easier to add music from elsewhere and you're not restricted on interface.

Saying that, if you can pick up something like the Brennan cheap then it doesn't look like a bad option for easy ripping and it still allows you to copy your files elsewhere if you want to back them up/play them with something else.

Be aware that FLAC files take up a fair bit of space though. My pretty modest collection of about 400 albums takes up about 500GB of HDD space so consider how much you have when choosing something.

Recommendations for a record cleaning brush?
Mine is about 36 years old…

Have you looked at the arm scripts?

https://b3n.org/automatic-ripping-machine/

https://github.com/automatic-ripping-machine/automatic-ripping-machine

https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/dtmt9v/guide_to_set_up_a_linux_headless_server_to_rip/

I have a tonne of cds and, now I’ve had no home internet for a week I’ve just found out most of my dvds I would watch again are from the us and can’t be played.

So I would really like to solve this.

Goka carbon.
In fact all goka accessories are great, very well priced and often the exact same product badged for another brand.

Also lol at recommending Linux apps to someone who finds a NAS a bit complex.

I used to use Handbrake for file conversion/ripping when iPads didn't support anything other than Mac formats?

You can either rip them using handbrake and turn them into a file format you can watch, or watch them using VLC, which you can watch pretty much any format through.

I’ve just found out most of my dvds I would watch again are from the us and can’t be played.

So I would really like to solve this.

Piracy solved this.

I personally ripped everything I owned, it took three years of doing several CDs or DVDs each evening.

But I regret it, it took freaking ages and there was very little I owned that wasn't available via a torrent. Piracy would've been quicker and easier and typically yielded higher quality 🤷

Yeah, I was actually thinking “I might just make a list of the things I have and then see what I can get”.

I don’t really want to get back ontontorrents

Misread tinkering and was responding to an alternative to the Brennan (which I’ve considered for the same reasons - ease)

All good, will be handy for others reading the thread. In the same spirit, Apple computers have auto-ripping of CDs (no clicking necessary), but you might want to convert from ALAC (apple lossless) to FLAC afterwards. It's easy to do though.

I wouldn't recommend apple ripping. It's not error checked and I've had plenty of audible problems with CD's ripped by iTunes or Music.

dbPoweramp Music Converter is well regarded and checks your rip against a database of other rips as well as error correction. It will also find cover art and track names.

I like to use Yate with a discogs release number to fully tag the files and create sensible file names and a folder with artwork. That's all a pain to set up but easy to do once it's established.

I’m really on the fence now! I probably could install a NAS but it’s the ongoing maintenance that troubles me, I work with a guy who seems to spend every weekend “setting up my NAS”. Convenience is king. Am not adverse to buying more CDs in the future.

ARM script, no thanks!
b3n / dtmt9v, no thanks!
Three years of ripping, love the commitment, and ultimate failure.
Torrenting, do not want a laptop in the kitchen.

Think the Brennan could be for me.

The guy you work with is a numpty. There's no ongoing maintenance to a NAS. Turn it on, setup networking, setup a share, setup backup, setup alerting, forget about it for years.

But if you're leaning to the Brennan, as long as it stores in a lossless non proprietary format, and you back it up, then I'm sure it's fine.

“setting up my NAS”

Fettling as a hobby.

Thanks, will look into it.

You can easily spend a lot of time pissing about with a NAS when you end up with scope creep but it can also be pretty much set it up once and that's it apart from occasional security updates.

I used DBPowerAmp when ripping mine. Pretty fast, had error correction, ripped to FLAC and MP3 simultaneously, filled in the ID3 tags and filed in the right place.

But, it looks like the Brennan can do some of the stuff you'd want a NAS to do. It's got a DLNA server so you can use it to serve up music to other players, you can plug in a USB drive and back up the music you've ripped to that.

If you have some PCs, Raspberry Pis, speakers, amps or other sound systems lying around (as, admittedly, I do) then I wouldn't bother with something like the Brennan. If that's not the case (like a normal person) then it looks like it has a decent amount going for it if you can pick one up at a reasonable price.

Found a Brennan B2 on Gumtree for £400, have made enquiries.

If I get it and it turns out to be more of a headache than a home build, I'll report back.

Thanks again for all the contributions.

Partner found me the missing components(namely speakers) to finish building up that tape deck my boss gave me. Sounds ace.
Suitably 80s Christmas activity wrestling with cables and levels

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