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Whole Home Audio Continues to Disappoint Pt2

I have a reasonably large MP3 library that I want as a music source. Russound offers a very expensive Media server for this purpose, but my music is already all stored on a network attached storage device. I would really rather not pay for a media server and duplicate the library. There are some nice solutions I’ve read about for this problem such as Squeezebox which can stream music from a NAS device, but I can’t see how to get it into the Russound.

The least painful solution was the pricey Russound iPod dock. This solution makes a simple iPod the music server with the ability to play music throughout the home from the iPod complete with song info to the keypad. I accepted this as a compromise, but it wasn’t so good. The first problem was selecting iPod options like shuffle were very esoteric; some combination of hitting the plus key and arrow keys. .

I put my 60 GB iPod in the dock and voila. It works pretty well. However, the keypads don’t have a sleep feature, so no simple way to set the Ipod before bed. The Ipod itself goes into a Russound mode when inserted in the dock which disables all the menus.  Lucky for the home automation integration. We created a sleep feature which turns off the master zone after an hour.This is a multi-kilobuck solution for a sleep timer. (Russound, no sleep timer, really?).  But here the Russound isn’t so smart and never actually turns off the iPod; after six months of continuous use (not what iPods normally do) the iPod gave out and died.  So now I lost my iPod and my MP3 capability. I could buy another, but it will die too. Or I could by a solid state unit and accept 16 GB library instead of all the songs I might want.

So I currently have no way to play MP3 music over the sound system; the recommend solution is a $2k media server to duplicate my music. As tempting as that is, my dealer says the Russound Media players are not very reliable.  It means every time I get new music, I will need to load it on the NAS and the Media Server. I am hoping for a better solution. My NAS actually supports Squeezebox natively – like so many other devices.

But even when it worked, it didn’t work great. I use the home automation keypad/display in the bed room (to get the sleep function) instead of a Russound keypad. The LCD display emulates a Russound keypad and has the same look of a 2 gang keypad. But the touch screen display does not support press and hold which is required for some specific functions on the keypad. No work arounds, the result is just a less than fully functional keypad.  The keypad has programmable buttons F1 and F2 – but I see no way to program them.

These shortcomings could not be determined until the system is installed.

So despite the many kilobucks invested into this whole home audio system, at best it only “mostly works”.  The radio works well. The CD player is a pain because there are no controls. We also plugged in the satellite audio, but that level is very low. So my choices are: learn to love it, upgrade it, or replace it.

Dealing with it means no access to the MP3 library, these ridiculous and limited ABUS controllers, and no song information when the radio plays. There are two upgrade options, adding another CAV6.6 amp which adds more zones replacing the ABUS zones. Still no MP3 library and still no RM radio song information for about $2k. The other upgrade option is a new Russound system called the C-Series. There is no upgrade route from my current system, so it is basically buying all new – but I can reuse my dual tuner receiver and my iPod dock. None of my existing keypads will work. Even worse, the new series only has 2 gang controllers and I have 5 single gang controllers – that means drywall, texture, and paint. This will likely cost $7000 all said and done and doesn’t  address the MP3, but does offer radio song information and a sleep function! The price is likely around $5k,and I hate to throw all that again at the same vendor that created this mess.

Then there is complete replacement with a different solution. My wiring is very flexible, I have Cat-5 and speaker wire running throughout the house. I contacted the same dealer I spoke to a year ago about the Nuvo system which appears to be a better fit; but they are upset they lost the sale last time and won’t help me unless I pay them $300 in consulting. It almost sounds reasonable, but since I have no idea if I want the Nuvo, I think not. I tried contacting Nuvo directly with some basic presales questions, but they don’t respond presumably leaving presale questions for their dealers. I am not certain what the cost will be, because the system comes bundled with parts I don’t need (2 gang controllers). I can’t compare the sound quality and I don’t know if there is an MP3 solution. I figure the system will cost about $6k.

The Nuvo and the Russound are architecturally similar. There are several other technologies out there to address this need. An increasingly common solution is to use LAN streaming to local amps in each room. The challenge here is getting all the rooms synchronized (having the speakers slightly off between two nearby rooms can be very irritating).

Really, this is all low tech stuff, but surprisingly difficult, expensive, and frustrating. “Mostly works” may be the best option.