Help me save my mates from the evil world of Brennan!!!

[trailer]

Indeed. Another thing is when you rip it doesn't seem to read the titles from a net database. You have to insert another database CD to get the titles?

[Stratmangler]

I was going to say that as a product it's close, but no cigar.
However it's more a case of not close at all and definitely no cigar

[Alex_UK]

Has anyone actually heard a Brennan? Is it really that bad?

I'll take that as a yes, then!

[Stratmangler]

I've never heard one.
The company's blurb puts me off, to be honest.

[trailer]

There's the Olive 03HD for £900 (ahem)

[Stratmangler]

There's the Olive 03HD for £900 (ahem)

It's enough to make you choke on your Cornflakes !!!

[WAD62]

...and still no better than a laptop with a half decent DAC

Just another modern day 'music centre'

[dave2010]

See what you mean - however, it will not deal with flac or alac, so the gist of my original comment stands.
An exact copy of the CD will be a wav. file - larger than a flac or alac.

I believe it does do WAV, which IIRC is effectively lossless. According to the specs the conversion can be done to an external hard drive - or at least the converted files moved to an external hard drive. Once there it should be possible, with luck, to do a batch conversion of the files to FLAC or ALAC using another computer - but I don't know if it'll work, not having one of these devices.

If that does work, then although the intermediate WAV files would be larger than needed, the final files would be more in keeping with what you'd want, though this solution might need one or two additional hard drives for the intermediate steps.

Re having heard one - I have, and it wasn't too bad, though whether that was simply for background listening I can't say as the volume levels weren't high, and it was at an afternoon party. The guy who owns it used to be keen on sound quality with a job in the TV/radio industry. I just can't comment for sure on whether the audio is merely OK, or whether it is actually good. If I used one than I'd possibly use it only for ripping, rather than listening to the audio as well. For that purpose using an old PC and a system such as Vortexbox might be a better option - http://vortexbox.org/about/

[Stratmangler]

I believe it does do WAV, which IIRC is effectively lossless.

There's no effectively about it - WAV is lossless.

[sq225917]

The sensible thing is to get your friends hooked back on enjoying music and easily integrating it into their lifestyle, then worry about crap like sound quality.