Until the iPod came along and “ripping” from something related to fishing threads to something you could do with a CD, digital music was the computer enthusiast’s premise. Obviously a lot has changed since Apple’s first portable players hit the market in 2001, but it seems the influence of Apple’s player has yet to have a serious impact on the world of ‘proper’ hi-fi.
Obviously there are many iPod HiFi systems on the market and some of them are very good. Check out Riyad’s review of the B&W Zeppelin, which combined great design with wonderful sound quality. I was also impressed by Fatman’s iTube system when I tested it late last year – a tube amp with an iPod dock attached.
But not everyone owns an iPod, and using one as your main hi-fi isn’t a particularly good way to browse music from the sofa – the screen is fine from a meter away, but if you sit on the sofa, you’ll struggle Understand what’s happening on the iPod Classic’s 2.5-inch screen.
As an alternative, I think you’ll struggle to match the Brennan JB7’s simplicity and elegance. Now I’d always prefer to use an audio streamer to listen to my digital music collection and pump a digital signal through a DAC to my amp and speakers, but that adds a layer of complications (and chaos) that the most people can easily. do not bother. This device keeps it simple, allowing you to rip CDs straight to its internal hard drive and listen to them from there.
And it’s as easy to use as the original iPod. Minutes after plugging it in and hooking it up to a pair of speakers, I had ripped a few CDs and was happily listening to them. All you have to do is pop a disc into the slot-loading drive, press the big round button on the front, and a few minutes later the JB7 will have the tracks compressed and transferred straight to the unit’s hard drive . A mighty impressive feat from such a small component.
You have the option of ripping CDs uncompressed at 320kbps, 192kbps or 128kbps, and with a built-in music database from CDDB, the unit should recognize most CD titles, artists and track names without resorting to the remote control keyboard. It had issues with a couple of the newer discs I’ve put in, but you can name albums manually, which doesn’t take long, and updating the database is a simple matter of downloading the FreeDB ISO image, copying it to a blank one Burn a CD-R and insert it into the device’s CD drive.
Once you’ve ripped a few discs, browsing is easy too. The light blue display uses the same vacuum fluorescent display as the Logitech Squeezebox, and its large lettering makes flipping through albums, songs, and artist names a pleasure—no more squinting from the couch. You can do the expected digital music tasks, e.g. B. Shuffle tracks and search for albums. There’s also a text search, which works great if you get bored searching track by track.
Oddly enough, despite the built-in database cataloging genres, artist names, composers, etc., the JB7 only lets you search and browse by track and album names. And you can’t manually name tracks either. That being said, the only thing the JB7 needs is a decent remote – its grid of blister buttons makes it extremely difficult to use right off the bat until you get used to it.
It’s a shame as the rest of the system is luxuriously well equipped and as well designed as the user interface is easy to use. With its rubberized gray body and electro-blue aluminum faceplate, it looks and feels snazzy, and there are plenty of handy features. The front panel is adorned with a large, clickable knob that is used to select and browse music, as well as adjust the volume during music playback. Other controls are limited to four buttons for play/stop, eject, and skip forward and backward through tracks.
There is also a USB socket on the left edge of the front panel for not only connecting an MP3 player, external hard drive or USB stick, but also for backing up the music stored on the JB7 to an external hard drive and loading music from the other way. If you’ve already ripped your music onto the hard drive, this is a huge time-saver, although it’s worth noting that the Brennan is limited as to the format of music files it can play – only MP3s are supported.
But do you want to know the best about the Brennan JB7? It’s the sheer size of the thing. Incredibly, all of this functionality is packed into a case that’s just over one and a half times the width of a CD (220mm) and just 48mm high. It’s a great box for anyone who has a penchant for minimalism or can’t afford a spacious four bedroom house.
And I’m not yet at the end of the JB7’s feature list. Its tiny frame houses a 30W per channel amplifier along with the hard drive and a set of spring terminals on the rear for connecting a pair of standard speakers – basically everything you need for your digital music system. The rear also features a 3.5mm headphone output, a 3.5mm line out and, conveniently, a 3.5mm stereo aux input. The latter allows you to record this analogue source directly as an MP3.
Given all its features, I almost don’t care how the JB7 performs – it’s that good elsewhere. But to complete the picture I can report that it is a very capable little player. It’s actually surprisingly good considering all the electronics and amplifier packed into such a small box.
I wouldn’t go so far as to call it outstanding though. I hooked up a pair of Sonus Faber Concertino speakers to the Spring Clips, played the excellent Killers album Sam’s Town over them, and while the JB7 pulled out all the detail in the complex tracks, it was a little lacking in dynamic range – not quite so much punch in the music as I would like it to be. The same goes for the bass output: shove in a bit of Jamiroquai and the normal muddy bottom end doesn’t come through with as much control as possible.
But that’s probably just because I’m picky. After a few hours of listening, I didn’t care at all – there’s plenty of volume and the Brennan never gets too muddled, whether you’re hitting it with complex classics like Mahler’s 6th Symphony, Metallica’s classic “black” album, or Ulf Wakenius. cool swedish e-guitar jazz. The Brennan manages to sound crystal clear and effortless throughout. As I said, despite the small things in such a tiny all-in-one box, this is remarkable, and it’s worth sacrificing a little storage space for quality: the JB7 loses some of its musical depth when you’re playing with 128 Rip Kbps. so it’s a good idea to rip at higher bitrates.
“‘Verdict”‘
As a compact, stylish digital music system, the Brennan JB7 is hard to beat, but it offers so much more than that: USB input, backup and file transfer, recording from external sources and CD ripping really couldn’t be simpler.
There are small things, of course, like the terrible remote control and the sound quality could be better for the money, but these are minor considering what has been a hugely successful overall package. If you’re looking for a decent iPod music system, consider one of these instead.