I have been reading forums, posting to forums and trying to decide what system I want for a long time. Ultimately I need eight zones for music in my new home. At this point I do not want any home automation and I doubt I will really require it in the future. For sources I want my digital cable box that carries local radio stations and satelite radio. As well I want the CD player, iPod and my home music server.
Originally I was torn between the Grand Concerto and the Adagio. I liked that the Adagio had more power and built in tuners. Aparently Crestron has software the allows you to interface with a PC media server but not sure how well it works. I think it is called SW-WMC. The Grand Concerto has a nicer keypad in my opinion over the APAD, in both athetics and functionality, keeping in mind only user audio distribution. The lack of IR passthrough on the Adagio, the limit of six zones and the fact that it is difficult for a DIY to program turned me off that route.
So I was set on the Grand Concerto and almost bought it this past weekend when somebody introduced me to Control4. I was recommened to buy their amplifier with switching for eight pairs of speakers with 100 watts per channel. This is a lot of power, and I believe it supports ten inputs. Then the home theature peice which apparently integrates with my home PC to access all of my media files. Then for control I would have the remote that comes with the home theature control and two of the full color LCD keypads, one for each floor. I like that fact that you have a small LCD on the remote and the color interface on the keypads.
My house has already been wired to have a double gang keypad in all eight rooms with speakers. So, if I go the Control4 avenue I have to cover many of these up to put a central interface on each floor. I have not read much on Control4 here, which is what makes me a little eerie to go this route. It works out about the same price as the Grand Concerto and it allows me to access my media server. With the Grand Concerto I was planning on buying CasaTunes to interface with my media server, but it still does not allow you to select the song from the keypad. It does show you metadata on the keypad, pause, stop, skip forward and back all from the keypad.
Please everyone, help me out. What should I do? I want something sleek and budget is of a concern.
AudioGuy1000
Originally I was torn between the Grand Concerto and the Adagio. I liked that the Adagio had more power and built in tuners. Aparently Crestron has software the allows you to interface with a PC media server but not sure how well it works. I think it is called SW-WMC. The Grand Concerto has a nicer keypad in my opinion over the APAD, in both athetics and functionality, keeping in mind only user audio distribution. The lack of IR passthrough on the Adagio, the limit of six zones and the fact that it is difficult for a DIY to program turned me off that route.
So I was set on the Grand Concerto and almost bought it this past weekend when somebody introduced me to Control4. I was recommened to buy their amplifier with switching for eight pairs of speakers with 100 watts per channel. This is a lot of power, and I believe it supports ten inputs. Then the home theature peice which apparently integrates with my home PC to access all of my media files. Then for control I would have the remote that comes with the home theature control and two of the full color LCD keypads, one for each floor. I like that fact that you have a small LCD on the remote and the color interface on the keypads.
My house has already been wired to have a double gang keypad in all eight rooms with speakers. So, if I go the Control4 avenue I have to cover many of these up to put a central interface on each floor. I have not read much on Control4 here, which is what makes me a little eerie to go this route. It works out about the same price as the Grand Concerto and it allows me to access my media server. With the Grand Concerto I was planning on buying CasaTunes to interface with my media server, but it still does not allow you to select the song from the keypad. It does show you metadata on the keypad, pause, stop, skip forward and back all from the keypad.
Please everyone, help me out. What should I do? I want something sleek and budget is of a concern.
AudioGuy1000
