The Brennan JB7 was born of maker Martin Brennan’s experience in transferring music from audio cassette to his computer. After devoting several weeks to the task, he found that he didn’t listen to the music often, even though these music was important to him. “Somehow using the computer to listen to the music never worked out”, he says. “Maybe the computer was the wrong place, but I think it lacked the immediacy of a physical play button”.
Upload time for a CD is approximately 4 minutes. In addition to simply uploading the track, you can choose one of 7 options, the colours of the rainbow. The thinking here is to use the 7 colours in the same manner you would a playlist, so you could use a colour for a mood, a genre… any such grouping you choose.
Find individual tracks, albums or artists by typing in the first few letters of their name. As you type the contents matching those initial letters will appear, as you type more the number of matches reduce, enabling you to find what you want to hear. Letter selection os by use of the volume knob. Or you could just select the random option, which will randomly play music from the entire contents of the disc.
You are able to upload files to the Brennan JB7 from a computer or iPod, but format-wise only MP3s are compatible.
You can make a back-up of the tracks on the Brennan JB7, but you’ll need to do so on a drive that is FAT32 formatted.
The device ships with a database containing the details of 2.6 millions CDs. Fine for old tracks, but if you’re uploading albums made after May 2009 then you’ll either have to add album and track details yourself, or purchase from Brennan an updated database.
Not only can you upload your CDs to the Brennan JB7, you can also upload from vinyl records and audio cassettes, via either a 3.5mm Stereo Male to Twin Phono or an adaptor.
Brennan JB7 price and availability
The Brennan JB7 is available for purchase from the Shop section of the Brennan website. The company is physically located in England, and only sells online and by mail order. If you’re wondering what countries it ships to, the website states “we have exported JB7 to lots of countries as far away as Australia”.
You can buy the Brennan JB7 in the following sizes and colours:
- 160GB- blue or metallic – £359 excluding shipping
- 320GB- blue or metallic – £399 excluding shipping
- 500GB- metallic – £469 excluding shipping
The Brennan JB7 does not ship with a main plug for countries other than the UK, “but the AC adaptor is universal and has a detachable lead with a small figure eight connector.”
By the way, if if you’re looking around and notice that the company makes loudspeakers, those they do not export, “because it is not economical to fly them.
Brennan have experienced a 700% increase in demand for the JB7 since 2009, and consequently have a waiting list for new orders. At the time of writing, it is 4 weeks, though with an advertising campaign currently running, it expects that time period to increase.
Specifications
- Stores 2500/5000/5000 CDs on 160/320/500G (high compression typical CD)
- Stores 1200/2500/5000 CDs on 160/320G/500G (normal compression worst case CD)
- Stores 210/420/630 CDs uncompressed on 160/320G/500G (worst case)
- Total 60W RMS
- 32 key credit card remote
- 2.4 million album database – update on CD
- Text Search for Track or Album by remote control or front panel
- Segue – blends one track into the next
- 180 x 32 soft scrolling graphic vacuum fluorescent display
- Dimensions: 4.8 x 16 x 22 cm
- Weight/materials: 1.6 kg steel and aluminium construction
- One touch startup – relax let JB7 pick the tracks
- One touch rip – transfer a CD track to MP3 player
- One touch record – convert vinyl to MP3s
- Loads CDs to hard disk at 12x – play music while loading
- Battery backed up clock with alarm
- MP3 encode at 128k, 192k or 320k – done automatically
- USB 2.0 Full Speed 12 Mbits / sec – compatible with USB Mass storage class devices formatted with FAT16 or FAT32 – USB memory sticks, Ipods, MP3 players, USB hard drives. Not MP4 players and Touch iPods.
- Rear connectors – loudspeakers, line in, line out, headphone, 24V DC
- Backup music and playlists to external USB hard disk for safe keeping – note that you must use a FAT32 formatted drive
- 400MHz Blackfin processor with Dual MAC
- Find and play MP3s on MP3 players and USB drives as if they were internal
- Transfer MP3s to and from USB
- External laptop computer style 24V power supply / AC adaptor – included – works from 110V to 240V. Size 3 x 6 x 13 cm. 3 metre overall lead length.
Subscribe to TechStyle’s RSS by email service
Keep up with TechStyle’s articles, news, reviews and more, by having it delivered direct to your email inbox. Subscription is quick, easy, and you control your subscription.