Kungsängen, a small town just outside Stockholm in Sweden, is the location of a superb new-build villa, owned by an interior designer and set over three floors. This stunning contemporary property is beautifully decorated and boasts state-of-the-art technology throughout, including a dedicated home cinema room – as well as sophisticated multi-room audio technology. The homeowners had clear objectives for the villa’s sound distribution system: they wanted to enjoy music in every room of the house and achieve a truly immersive audio experience, but without lots of cables and bulky equipment compromising the fabulous interior design. Further requirements were for the music system to be cost effective, fully intuitive and extremely easy to use.
Enter NuVo Technologies and its flagship Grand Concerto multi-zone audio distribution system, an intelligent six-source, eight-zone system delivering NuVo’s trademark high quality sound. Not only is it one of the most aesthetically pleasing and discrete multi-room systems on the market, but the Grand Concerto is also user-friendly enough for absolutely anyone to operate, including the owner’s children.
Installers for the project were Stockholm-based Reference Audio, supplied by NuVo’ s Swedish distribution partners, Canseda AB. Erik Skanderbeck from Reference Audio takes up the story.
“NuVo’s Grand Concerto multi-zone audio distribution system was the perfect choice for this installation, integrating seamlessly with the elegant décor yet still delivering the ultimate in listening power for the whole family. Grand Concerto is exceptionally easy to install as well. It communicates via CAT-5 cables – ideal for this property where several cables had not been correctly prepared by the builders or were missing completely.”
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The Grand Concerto system in the Kungsängen Villa has been set up so that the owners can choose from six separate audio sources, delivering uninterrupted digital sound to six different listening zones within the property, with the option to add up to two more zones if required at a later date. Rated for 80 watts of power per zone the Grand Concerto’s amplifier provides more than enough capacity to drive several speakers in a single area. Switching between sources is easy and the owners can listen to multiple sound sources in the six different zones simultaneously if desired or opt to play the same song in every room with perfect synchronicity!
The entire system is controlled by stylish, wall mounted capacitive touch interfaces featuring OLED displays, so changing the volume or source of a zone can be done with a simple touch of a finger from anywhere in the property. The interactive, 2.7in OLED surface displays up to 8 lines of text and streamlined navigation makes the keypads incredibly simple to use, enabling sources to be browsed by playlist, track, artist, album, genre, or station.
A variety of clever features are included in the Grand Concerto system, such as overall maximum volume control, which allows the volume in a zone to be limited to avoid damage to speakers or simply to prevent a certain room from being turned up too high. Plus a unique feature on the NuVo Control Pads lets users adjust the sound system to the natural acoustics of each individual room. Other innovative features include exclusive source control, which gives priority control to a certain zone, and the ability to choose which sources are available on a zone-by-zone basis. Zones can be grouped together in large areas for playing the same source, but still allow independent control and volume adjustment.
One of the six audio sources in the Villa is a NuVo iPod dock which allows an iPod to be played through the NuVo Grand Concerto system and enables users to instantly call up, browse and control their iPod music library from the backlit display of any of the wall-mounted control pads.
In order for the owners to enjoy whole-home radio distribution and be able to listen to their favourite radio broadcast programmes on FM or AM radio, a NuVo radio tuner T2FAM was also installed. The radio tuner is controlled through the display keypads located throughout the property and users can also access RDS streaming artist/selection information in real time.
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A key requirement of the installation was easy music control in the outdoor spaces, so the Villa also boasts the latest NuVo Wireless Control Pad, which gives wireless control of the Grand Concerto multi-room audio set-up and all the sources attached to it. The sleek, compact, handheld Wireless Control Pad features a 1.6in OLED screen with 2-way metadata for extra flexibility. The wireless control pad can be taken anywhere in the property where in-wall Control Pads aren’t conveniently accessible and used to select music or sources, making it ideal for outside areas.
Overall, the NuVo Grand Concerto system at the Villa in Kungsängen is a perfect example of a versatile multi-room audio distribution system, seamlessly integrated into the fabric of the building with complete discretion.