Brennan JB7 - CD Reader / Player - Any good?
Discussion
My wife hates my collection of CD's in the lounge, so I'm considering getting one of these
http://www.brennan.co.uk/?gclid=COL9teb9_agCFYEc4Q...
Anyone got any feedback based on experience please?
http://www.brennan.co.uk/?gclid=COL9teb9_agCFYEc4Q...
Anyone got any feedback based on experience please?
My wife decided to get one just before Christmas in order to keep our CD collection in one "tidy" place.
It really depends what you are looking for.
It's not really a CD player, though of course it will play them. The idea is to upload your CDs to the JB7.
It will read a music CD in between 3 to 7 mins. You have the option to store the album tracks as lossless wav files or mp3 with a choice of sampling quality. It defaults to mp3.
If you have your own mp3 you can upload them directly via the USB port from a memory stick or a removable hard drive.
When you load a CD it searches its internal database to find the title, artist and track titles.
It then keeps all these in its own database which can be searched by any text you like on artist track or album title.
We had about 1300 CDs and of course, I got the job of feeding them all in. It took me 3 months on and off but is great now its done. I've found tracks I never thought I had!
The JB7 found about 95% or more of the albums on its database. I did have to enter some of the track titles manually and that is a pain.
Let me know if you have a specific question and I'll try to answer.
It really depends what you are looking for.
It's not really a CD player, though of course it will play them. The idea is to upload your CDs to the JB7.
It will read a music CD in between 3 to 7 mins. You have the option to store the album tracks as lossless wav files or mp3 with a choice of sampling quality. It defaults to mp3.
If you have your own mp3 you can upload them directly via the USB port from a memory stick or a removable hard drive.
When you load a CD it searches its internal database to find the title, artist and track titles.
It then keeps all these in its own database which can be searched by any text you like on artist track or album title.
We had about 1300 CDs and of course, I got the job of feeding them all in. It took me 3 months on and off but is great now its done. I've found tracks I never thought I had!
The JB7 found about 95% or more of the albums on its database. I did have to enter some of the track titles manually and that is a pain.
Let me know if you have a specific question and I'll try to answer.
Dear andy tims,
you can do a similar thing on your PC.
I use EAC.
A mite techie but it is free. Full choice of codecs. Burn copies too. Online database so is always up to date.
The speed of copying is mostly down to the optical drive in your PC (which you can change).
Speed of encoding is down to the power of your PC and hard drive speed.
The advantages I see of the Brennan are neatness and simplicity.
Disadvantages are cost and that out of date /limited database. Can you back it up?
regards,
Jet
you can do a similar thing on your PC.
I use EAC.
A mite techie but it is free. Full choice of codecs. Burn copies too. Online database so is always up to date.
The speed of copying is mostly down to the optical drive in your PC (which you can change).
Speed of encoding is down to the power of your PC and hard drive speed.
The advantages I see of the Brennan are neatness and simplicity.
Disadvantages are cost and that out of date /limited database. Can you back it up?
regards,
Jet
jet_noise said:
Dear andy tims,
you can do a similar thing on your PC.
I use EAC.
A mite techie but it is free. Full choice of codecs. Burn copies too. Online database so is always up to date.
The speed of copying is mostly down to the optical drive in your PC (which you can change).
Speed of encoding is down to the power of your PC and hard drive speed.
The advantages I see of the Brennan are neatness and simplicity.
Disadvantages are cost and that out of date /limited database. Can you back it up?
regards,
Jet
dbpoweramp is the option I went for after considering EAC (I'm technical, but wanted easy), it's ID'd 99%+ of my CD's most of them with cover art and with the easy to use plug in's I get it to chop out the long silence tracks, normalize and occasionally write a playlist. Monkey Media for PC playback (plus burning and putting tracks on the ipod as it converts to mp3 from flac on the fly). Playback in any room via squeezebox.you can do a similar thing on your PC.
I use EAC.
A mite techie but it is free. Full choice of codecs. Burn copies too. Online database so is always up to date.
The speed of copying is mostly down to the optical drive in your PC (which you can change).
Speed of encoding is down to the power of your PC and hard drive speed.
The advantages I see of the Brennan are neatness and simplicity.
Disadvantages are cost and that out of date /limited database. Can you back it up?
regards,
Jet
The brennan looks like an expensive ipod/dock with a built in ripper aimed at the technophobe end of the market. Plenty of positive reviews out there but you need to be aware of its limitations.
jet_noise said:
Dear andy tims,
you can do a similar thing on your PC.
I use EAC.
A mite techie but it is free. Full choice of codecs. Burn copies too. Online database so is always up to date.
The speed of copying is mostly down to the optical drive in your PC (which you can change).
Speed of encoding is down to the power of your PC and hard drive speed.
The advantages I see of the Brennan are neatness and simplicity.
Disadvantages are cost and that out of date /limited database. Can you back it up?
regards,
Jet
The whole JB7 can be backed up via USB to another drive.you can do a similar thing on your PC.
I use EAC.
A mite techie but it is free. Full choice of codecs. Burn copies too. Online database so is always up to date.
The speed of copying is mostly down to the optical drive in your PC (which you can change).
Speed of encoding is down to the power of your PC and hard drive speed.
The advantages I see of the Brennan are neatness and simplicity.
Disadvantages are cost and that out of date /limited database. Can you back it up?
regards,
Jet
It will also play any mp3s that are on any drive you connect to it via USB.
It has 2 outputs at the back. One is line level if you want to plug it into your HiFi, and one amplified output if you have good passive speakers.
The point of it is that it sits nicely in your living room with your other audio equipment and interfaces with that. You operate it via remote and can sit in your armchair and find and play any track or album.
You can create playlists or have it play random tracks. It will eliminate the gaps between tracks and segue them if you want.
The downside is that the CD database is soon out of date. You have to send off for a new one every so often and upload it to the JB7 via the USB.
It reads in CDs very quickly because it rips directly to wav files. It then converts these to mp3 (if you want) in the background.
If the database doesn't find your track/album you can rip the CD on your PC/laptop and and get the titles from the online database, then upload the ripped to mp3 tracks directly to the JB7. It will pick up the album and track titles from the folder and file names.
You don't need the artwork if you already have the original CDs, and that is the main reason for getting the JB7. Neat, no clutter, straightforward.
Edited by Stonebridge on Tuesday 24th May 11:48
My dad recently bought a Brennan - not sure which model.
He wanted to get rid of clutter.
On paper it was just what he wanted, and the company were great to deal with. Unfortunately there was a lot of background noise whilst playing, and also on the replacement. In the end he got his money back and now has a Squeezebox solution.
I hope they can iron out the QC problems and make a go of it. My worry was that the third one would be OK and develop a problem down the line by which time Brennan might have gone to the wall...
Great if you don't want the whole amp/NAS/media PC whirring away, but not for me.
He wanted to get rid of clutter.
On paper it was just what he wanted, and the company were great to deal with. Unfortunately there was a lot of background noise whilst playing, and also on the replacement. In the end he got his money back and now has a Squeezebox solution.
I hope they can iron out the QC problems and make a go of it. My worry was that the third one would be OK and develop a problem down the line by which time Brennan might have gone to the wall...
Great if you don't want the whole amp/NAS/media PC whirring away, but not for me.
interesting to see some users of the brennan as it seems to be advertised all over the place. the thing that struck me ( not that i wanted one) was how the heck you'd search for a track - i assumed from the little blurb that i'd seen that you'd do that just by artist/title which if i understnd the comments above is about right? that seems very limiting - but then i suppose we all listen to music in different ways: some by album, some by artist and some by playlist.
If any of you good folks are into an alternative solution that's pc based i'd recomemnd a look at OTSAV.
There's various progs that do similar things but of the ones i've tried this one ticks all the boxes ( for me). Essentially its aimed at DJ's/VJ's and local radio stations ( think outback america or local/hospital type radio here).
i got it because it ticked these boxes> seamlessly fades and has a built in compensator to keep all levels the same ( variable to whatever paraneters you set ) so no highs/lows between tracks, plays video a big must for me as i have a reasonable selection of live albums and VJ based dvd's, but best of all for me is teh search facility. You can make up to 128 categories and search in a normal database type of way - ie' querying the database to bring up a finite selection, given that you have a rating of 1-10 as well the ability to tailor a playlist to suit the company you have or the mood you're in is fantastic. As well as slecting uto templates to create those lists you can create your own easily ie/ you can as it to give say: 3x 'hard rock' & favorrites, 1x 'hard pop', 1x ska& favourites, 1x party & video.....etc etc then tell it you wnat a playlist for 10 hours and off it goes.
as i said i use playlist extensively as opposed to listening to complete albums and this is just so useable ( once you've bothered towork out how you want to categorize your music to allow you the best access to it ).
sorry was slightly off original topic, but thought i'd mention it as an alternative.....
If any of you good folks are into an alternative solution that's pc based i'd recomemnd a look at OTSAV.
There's various progs that do similar things but of the ones i've tried this one ticks all the boxes ( for me). Essentially its aimed at DJ's/VJ's and local radio stations ( think outback america or local/hospital type radio here).
i got it because it ticked these boxes> seamlessly fades and has a built in compensator to keep all levels the same ( variable to whatever paraneters you set ) so no highs/lows between tracks, plays video a big must for me as i have a reasonable selection of live albums and VJ based dvd's, but best of all for me is teh search facility. You can make up to 128 categories and search in a normal database type of way - ie' querying the database to bring up a finite selection, given that you have a rating of 1-10 as well the ability to tailor a playlist to suit the company you have or the mood you're in is fantastic. As well as slecting uto templates to create those lists you can create your own easily ie/ you can as it to give say: 3x 'hard rock' & favorrites, 1x 'hard pop', 1x ska& favourites, 1x party & video.....etc etc then tell it you wnat a playlist for 10 hours and off it goes.
as i said i use playlist extensively as opposed to listening to complete albums and this is just so useable ( once you've bothered towork out how you want to categorize your music to allow you the best access to it ).
sorry was slightly off original topic, but thought i'd mention it as an alternative.....
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