bose vs brennan - any advice

[kemptown kid]

Thinking of shifting to one of those smaller hi fi systems. Are the Bose and/or Brennan systems any good?Anyone got any experience/advice to offer?

 

[1234andcounting]

KK...Never had brennan. Got myself a Bose Lifestyle 38 a few years ago and I love it. Have loaded up c 100 albums so far and used about a quarter, if that, of the memory. Sound is brilliant. I thought the max volume on the system was 30 as it defaults to that when turned on. When we had friends round shortly after I bought it, they asked me how loud it would go;so I held the volume control down and it shot through the 30 mark and kept on rising. 30 would probably bring the house three or more doors down calling round to ask me to turn the volume down. Not cheap though at £3300 and they did piss me off by failing to deliver it at the time they said they would (a reasonable 7pm); hadn't turned up at 11pm so i said some other time, please....Had to have it delivered as I ordered it from the Regent Street store. I also have a pair of their headphones, which are great. So, if you can get the delivery sorted out and have some spare cash, I would say go for it.

 

[clippedgull]

Bose are class! (NASA use them on the Space Station!) Can't speak for Brennan.

 

[ferring seagull]

I bought the Brennan JB7 about a year ago, the smallest capacity of the three options as was more than enough for my needs.

The largest will cope with something like 5500 CDs if reasonably compressed without any noticeable deterioration in sound quality.

I have loaded around only 200 CDs without any compression and that works for me very well. What you get is basically a 'juke box', ie you load your albums and, having done so, you can search for those albums by scrolling through or by inputting the name of the artist (eg 'elt' will bring up albums of elton john etc) so it is very quick and efficient.

I was interestesed in the concept and was looking at a the Sony 'Gigajuke' but after having looked at reviews on the net settled for the Brennan which everyone was adamant was that much better. For example, loading a CD on to the JB7 takes around 3 minutes but takes 10 with the Sony.

The Brennan JB7 uses mobile phone technology (for the searching) Martin Brennan is a physicist and well clued up.

I bought their speakers (£60 extra and which you don't have to) and I find the sound quality more than adequate for my needs though I cannot say whether or not Sound addicts would be happy or otherwise.

I have found their customer service to be excellent !

PM me if you wish to know any more but sorry I cannot help on BOSE

 

[beefypigeon]

Bowers & Wilkins

 

[manilaseagull]

I won a Bose Lifestyle 48 a few years ago in a raffle...

Its dogs knob!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

but I think about £4k to buy....it also came with a 42" LCD as a prize..

 

[ferring seagull]

PS The cost of the Brennan JB7 is around £400 rather than £4000 so depends what you want ?

 

[strings]

I have a bose system on my TV - not surround sound, just two speakers either side and a bass box. Nevertheless, the quality of sound (especially with blu-ray) is amazing. My dad has one of the Bose lifestyle systems - he has had it about 10 years and it is still phenonemal. I really would recommend bose. I have never used Brennan, but I don't ever intent to move from Bose soundsystems.

 

[kemptown kid]

Thanks for tips so far - much appreciated. Would love a £3000 system, but budget closer to £500 I'm afraid. Running out of space for new CDs (more accurately, exhausting patience of less clutter happy partner!) so curious about the benefits of Brennan hard drive option, have seen ads, but never met anyone who has one.

 

[Hiney]

Put the music on your PC and then stream it to your sound system

 

[The Antikythera Mechanism]

Slightly off topic, but if anyone can help, it would be appreciated. I have a hard drive sound system in my car, but if I copy a CD that has a continual mix, to it, it ends up with pauses between each track when replayed. Why is this?

 

[sten_super]

Slightly off topic, but if anyone can help, it would be appreciated. I have a hard drive sound system in my car, but if I copy a CD that has a continual mix, to it, it ends up with pauses between each track when replayed. Why is this?

All software is programmed to put a slight delay in - on CDs it is built in to the encoding on the disc (and left out for mix CDs), but PCs (or whatever hardware you are using) just take the data between the 'start' and 'stop' markers on the CD, and as such the software is programmed to reproduce them manually. On iTunes I know there's an option to change/remove this gap, so I'd have thought that there'd be some setting for it on bespoke music systems but I'm afraid I couldn't tell you where.