Whole House Audio/Video

Anybody have any experience with these systems? Seems everyone here is controlling their heaters & lights. I'd like to find a system where I could control the heat, and all that, but more importantly have a single server for music and video, plus local control if needed.

That's the spirit! :eye roll:

Actually, I thing Armond probably meant Google Groups, as a search for words like "russound" does turn up quite a number of hits.

Anyway. My parents have one of the olderschool Russound CA-4.4 at our bay house. Installation and operation are straightforward. To go a little fancier, I'd wouldn't mind having some of the newer Russound rnet stuff.. CAM6.6 with an uno touchscreen.

Sound quality seems a little thing, but I'm not sure if that's hte Russ or if it's the speakers. I think I'd definately recomend some sort of smart display that allows you to see what's playing or to make selections. Multi-zone audio is fun, but having to walk back to the component cabinet to select the CD or to see which radio station you're on kindof defeats the purpose.

True enough, but there's not actually a lot of up-to-date experience. There are some useful postings of individual installations, almost none of which are the current "sexy" systems. Control4, Russound, AMX/Crestron...the best I can find is that you close your eyes and hope when you go through an installer.

Why go through an installer at all? If you're at least a little handy with tools and you have patience to learn a few new things, you could install your own system. It's not rocket science.

Regards, Robert L Bass

My main concern is synchronization between zones. If you stream MP3, that's pretty hard, I think. Whereas, audio can be synched without problems.

I have the Kustom system. It works great and I use it all of the time. I have CD, Satellite, FM tuner and Computer via Haupauge gadget as zones. I have also integrated the door bell.

What else do you want to know?

Larry

HI have a look at

with the extreamer on each room you can use a pc as a mp3 server and send by ethernet to each room the music you want. the extreamer GOLD has the sync option already inside and ready to use. They are working on add it to the extreamer "red"..the small one. I'm now testing the system for may house audio distribution and I find it very good and cheap I've already ethernet on each room so it's easy to add an extreamer.

Just my 2 cents

CIAO Davide

Kustom is now named Nuvo. I have the Concerto system with a T2 tuner and wit works great. Go to

for more info.

Les

The Kustom system is the same idea as Russound(sp) and most of the others. These systems have separate amplifiers for each zone and multiple sources that any zone can select. They are all independent so they can all listen to the same source or different sources. The speakers are wired to the system using standard speaker wire. The zone controllers, one for each zone and one master, are wired using standard CAT 5 wire. They provide volumne control, source selection and IR control back to the sources. You can use the IR to control the source, on/off, station select, etc., anything you can do with the sources remote control.

Worthington and most of the standard places sell these types of systems.

I hook up my computer as a source to play MP3's, Internet Radio, pictures, movies, etc., using the MediaMVP from Hauppauge,

It connects your PC via a standard ethernet connection to a device that displays on your TV and provides standard line level audio that I use as a source for my whole house system. There are similar devices that support WIFI as well. It only costs $100 and it works well.

My system has a door bell input that rings a door bell over the zone speakers. Very handy for when you are sitting around the pool and somebody comes to the door.

Hope this helps.

Larry

W\\

This looks cool, and certainly much less expensive than the alternatives. Smarthome distributes in the US.