The Brennan JB7

I bought a JB7, not only for copying CDs, but mainly for copying my vinyl collection.  It appears to be faulty in that, although it has a setting for copying losslessly, when I select this it still copies at 320 kbps.  I have been trying to get this sorted with their technical support, but I am unimpressed with their after sales service.  There have been other instances where they clearly don't know what they're talking about, and the help documentation is very incomplete.

Another problem I had is that I wanted to copy my backup from a small drive to a new one.  However, after I had done this, it wouldn't make incremental backups to the new drive.  I had to delete and start again. And it takes 24 hours just to back up 30GB!

I've got a good AR record deck, so I didn't want to buy a much inferior ION deck, or find that my audio card is poor quality, which is why I went for the Brennan.  I must admit that, even at 320 kbps, the sound from a copied vinyl is very good, and possibly superior to a CD.  I had my ears syringed yesterday though, and I should have another listening session to confirm this.  You have to jump up to stop recording as soon as the side ends, because editing the recording is probably a pain.

To answer some other questions above, renaming albums and tracks is much easier with a USB keyboard, which simply plugs into the USB socket.  The creditcard-size remote with 32 buttons is hopeless.

In summary, I'm waiting to hear if Brennan can fix the problem of no lossless recording.  It's not a perfect bit of kit by any means, and the after sales service is poor, but I'm still hopeful that it will do what I bought it for, eventually.

The helpful people at Gramophone online pointed out that there's a link UNDERNEATH the first post which says You are not watching this post, click to start watching. Well, I knew I was due for an eye test. Sorry everyone. 

R.

After reading all the almost entirely helpful comments I went ahead and bought a lowest-spec (160Gb) Brennan and I have to agree with Didymus:

And as an ex-techie I also agree that's it's just what you'd expect from a techie - great in parts. Now if I'd designed it, it would have a whole different set of flaws.

As for the information database

I agree. The best work-around I found was to rip my CDs onto my PC using Windows Music Player, which uses a different music database (which is also full of horrors). The advantage of using WMP to rip them is that WMP's user interface makes it much easier to edit the album and track names, because you can copy and paste.

Once you have MP3s (at whichever bit rate you choose), you can also tinker with the file names and folder names so that when you upload them to the Brennan they look however you want. I used folders with artist plus album name for pop, or composer plus composition plus artist for classical. Then MP3 files with track or movement name, plus (for various artists albums) artist name.

I KNOW you can achieve the same results with an iPod or Squeezebox or Sony GigaJuke, but I don't want something that <provocation on> looks like a child's toy <provocation off> on display in my sitting room. I could I suppose even plug in my Philips MP3 player, but that looks a piece of plastic that fell off Buzz Lightyear.

And as for that keypad... Grrr.

R.

I joined this forum because of my concern with reliability, & see most of the discussion is with the quality, compression etc. Maybe I'm just unlucky. I bought a 320G for Christmas, and within an hour of powering it on, I kept getting Disk Error. I ran a "Map Disk" which took some 18 hours, but still no good. Brennan sent me a firmware fix, but this stopped it even powering on. They sent me a replacement (in fact a free upgrade to the 500G). I managed to load approx 25 CDs to it, and all was working perfectly, when suddenly the sound went. I can see that it is "playing" but nothing coming out. I've had it plugged through my amp (a TEAC), I've tried it on its own, with the speakers plugged in, and also with just headphones - absolutely nothing. Brennan are now going to send me another replacement. I do hope my 3rd JB7 in 3 weeks will actually work more than 24 hours. I'll return to the forum and let you know!

Reply to comment number 76. If you would care to look at my posts number 62 & 72. I have used the Brennan for vinly copying with some success using an Ion turntable in the usb socket. If the input is bad ask brennan for the fix. All their fixes seem to be numbered JB1.

hi not techy at all.

I had problems with mine and so I acted quickly and sent it back.

The company were very reasonable about it and I feel much better.

I'm still looking for a solution to having lots of cds.

I may have to spend more than I'd thought, not a problem

I have recently been casting about for a turnkey solution to digital streaming and storage, with an eye to eventually eliminating the CD library.  Just noticed the Brennan, but it seems terribly limited.  Has anyone compared it to the somewhat more expensive Olive 3HD?  For a tad more, it seems to me the Olive unit has a lot more to offer.