The Brennan JB7

My wife gave me a JB7 for Christmas.  I think her hope is that we can eventually lose the large, rather ugly piece of furniture that now houses vinyl, CDs, MiniDiscs, cassettes and their various players and have just the JB7 and an amplifier standing on something more elegant.

Now I have a lot of experience of the machine, let me make the following comments.

No-one has yet mentioned what strikes me as a very fundamental shortcoming in the JB7: it has no fast forward/reverse buttons.  So you can't thread quickly through a long track to find a point of interest - something I do fairly often.  That makes the JB7 the first piece of audio equipment I've encountered since the 1950s to lack this normally 'standard' facility!

I bought a cheap USB mini keyboard which makes life much easier than the silly remote control that comes with the machine.  For the next generation of Brennan devices, I strongly suggest they provide a small wireless keyboard with a small multi-line display; that would eradicate the regular complaints about the current remote and one-line slow-scrolling display.

Loading my 900 CDs was a breeze, relatively speaking, though the on-board CD database is pretty pathetic, and boxed sets cause massive problems since the JB7 often can't recognize different discs with very similar names.  For vinyl, MDs and tapes, I decided not to bother with the JB7.  I have Sony Sound Forge audio studio on my computer, so record from my existing system to my laptop.  That way I can use SoundForge to 'improve' scratchy LP recordings when appropriate, and to divide lengthy recordings into tracks within folders, the only system the JB7 will accept.  I then upload everything to the JB7 via the USB port.

Like others in this forum, I've found the JB7 to be occasionally temperamental, though I'm perfectly happy with its performance generally.  For me it sounds fine, played through my reasonably high-end old amplifier.  Hi-fi fanatics will always be unhappy with one or other aspect of audio equipment, so they will never be perfectly satisfied.  (How often do they test their ears with a good double-blind ABX set-up, I wonder?)

Of course, one could use a computer to do everything the JB7 can handle and a lot more; the problem is that a computer does so much more than play music, I'd never be happy leaving one alone to do nothing but play audio.  The JB7 is a nice-looking, discrete piece of kit for a living room.

I've backed up all the CDs to an external hard drive.  The other recordings are backed up on my computer drives.  It took THREE DAYS to back up the 60 Gb of CDs from the Brennan: clearly the USB interface is not the latest and fastest!

My final comments...  Support from Brennan is pathetic.  They don't answer emails at all, from my experience.  The company is advertising itself with a strong image of Martin Brennan as a one-man wonder.  Sadly, the company may indeed be a near-solo effort, typifying the UK delight in the lone amateur approach to everything.  While cottage industries may appeal to some British instincts, they don't represent the ideal in retail business, where customer service and support truly need to be superb.  I hope the JB8 will be a device that is unequivocally state-of-the-art in all its functions, much more able than the JB7 to do things that have been audio-elementary for decades, MP3-elementary since MP3 first appeared.

I bought a jb7 about six months ago when I simplified the way I listen to music considerably. I used to stream from my server , to my xbox & through my amp. Then I realised if I included tv & router it took me 5 devices to play music , it just seemed to much.
With the simplicity of the system , in the time it takes the xbox to start I can turn on the jb7 , search for the album or artist I want , have it playing & be off doing something else.
It seems in making this kit they have reduced it down to the bare essentials , if you want mass produced music played thro mass produced speakers then this is ideal for you. I have a two year old daughter who loves jabbing her fingers & toys at my speakers :-)
I know the music database isn't linked to the web but I loaded 950+ albums & had only 5 that didn't recognise so I'm pretty impressed with that.
For music that isn't recognised you have two options either type artist & track in on the system itself which is slow or drop the machine assigned names out via USB stick , edit them on pc & back load them both methods do the trick.
I'm more than happy with mine although I am sure it's not all things to everybody

bought my jb7 yesterday, arrived today. going back tomorrow, unless it gets sorted asap. DISK ERRORs all over the place. One minute it recognised my album, next minute it didn't. I don't want to have to type in every album name with a piddly remote control. Save your money ..

I wanted simplicity as per the advert, not this. I could have done this myself.

It is not exactly a cheap piece of kit so why put up with it?  It is within the guarantee period (assuming you are in the UK) so I would suggest sending it back and claim a full refund.  Even if it is outside the guarantee period, (I am no expert on this so you may want to seek other advice from e.g. the people in "Which?") you may still be within your rights under the UK consumer protections act to reject it as "not fit for the purpose", return it and demand a full refund.  You may have a good case for it since you were sent a "fix" for the distortions which did nothing, and I would expect a kit marketed through adverts in hi-fi magazines should have a reasonable expectation of hi-fi quality, which by what you and others have said, it clearly falls short of this quality.

I bought one earlier this year - the largest capacity possible.

The leaflet that comes with the device is brief to the point of disbelief.

However, the Brennan web site is very useful and well worth reading. They are honest enough in pointing out its attractions as well as its deficiencies. There are lots of tips on how to get around problems for the user. I wanted to store the maximal number of CDs so opted for the 320K compression setting so I should be able to store up to 3000 CDs.

You cannot buy this in the shops and can only be bought direct from Brennan. The packing I was not impressed with but having said that it arrived undamaged after about three weeks. 

Loading the CDs is tedious and time consuming. It has taken me three months to load 2000 CDs. The advantage of the system is that the JB7 reads the CD and does the compression later whilst you are asleep or at work thus saving some time.  The main issues I have with the system is the identification of the CDs and tracks. This is very unsatisfactory. The machine has a database pre-loaded and the CD details are retrieved from this. If it cannot find the CD you have to enter all the data manually. For my collection I would say it could not find around 15% of the discs. The greater problem is that the retrieval of the music. To play a piece requires entering some sort of name. The database seems oriented towards pop and rock music with artists being emphasized. I don’t know about you but I tend to search for music by composer rather than artist. This it is not much help having a great list of music by LSO or Rattle but it may not be listed under Beethoven. To get around this problem you have to go in and re-name all the discs which are not labelled as you would want – and for me this was most of them. Quite a few just seem to have completely unrelated information attached to them. To correct this is another three months’ work, very tedious but can be speeded up by using a computer with a keyboard. However beware as the database is text and if you make an error it won’t re-load and just gives the line of the error which might be line 10405 for example. Who is going to count through that to find the error? So you end up having to re-load the original database thus losing your hard work. I therefore recommend re-loading new database information in very small chunks to avoid wasting even more of your life on it.

Also rather worryingly I have loaded many sets of operas and on trying to retieve them discover one or more of the discs cannot be found. I am still trying to work out why. It is often the first discs that are missing. I wonder if it overwrites with the subsequent discs if they have identical names. So far I have identified 80 CD sets where one or more disc is missing.

The Brennan can also be quite sensitive to any CD flaw and will sometimes reject a disc part way through loading. The disc often loads if you clean any dust off it (but not always). However there is only a very brief warning taht it has not loaded properly. If you walk out of the room for those few seconds the error displayed you would never know and so continue with the next disc obliviously.

The advantages over a regular ipod is really just the size of the drive.  If you get the smaller drive size it may be better to just get an ipod. It is certainly a lot easier to use than the Brennan.

Sound quality is acceptable. The music is compressed. If you are used to listening to music on expensive equipment then you will notice the compression. As Brennan point out they are not a hi-fi product but more of a consumer product. This is true, but the sound is perfectly acceptable especially as a second hi-fi set up in another part of the house with more ambient noise.

Reliability seems fine thus far. It is convenient but needs a lot of setting up.

As the set up is time consuming you must back the data up in case the hard drive fails. Again this is not straight forward as you need a drive of the same size formatted as FAT32 (not NTFS). Take care as most are NTFS and it takes a lot of reading of packaging to ensure you have the correct drive. For 500 GB drive I have used Buffalo Just Store Portable (£44). This works well. Back up takes ages – 2000 CDs took over a week day and night and I imagine re-building would take the same length of time..

The bottom line is that I have got fed up with it - it just sits on my desk. The re-labelling of loaded CDs is mind-numbingly tedious - I have got to P and lost heart. I dare say it is fine if you just want to programme it to play randomly. However if you are a relatively obsessive person, you will find this device infuriatingly frustrating and you should be prepared to dedicate six months of your life to setting it up, correcting all the erroneous data. Brennan really need to sort out the interface.

I should add that I haven't been able to road test all of the functionality in the JB7 yet, and it maybe that there are solutions to my access needs in the box, but I have yet to find them. I agree with other comments that the documentation isn't good enough. It isn't written or presented from a consumer / user perspective.