Your browser is out-of-date!

Update your browser to view this website correctly. Update my browser now

×

Case Study: The Day the Music Fried

After a lightning strike, Nuvo takes the heat to bring a 17-zone audio system back to life.

Chris Colotti of Greeneville, TN — principal technologist at Cohesity, Inc. — is a professed “tech-savvy IT guy” with a penchant for performing his own AV installations. In 2014, he installed a 17-zone Nuvo Player Portfolio audio system in his home. Consisting of four P3500 Professional Series rack-mount players, one P100 and one P200 single-zone wireless Players, two P300 Player preamplifiers, and 10 P10 keypad controllers, the system has allowed him and his wife Julie to stream their favorite tunes to any room in the house for the last five years — whether for background music when working or for evening entertainment. In July 2019, however, the music abruptly stopped when lightning struck their home, damaging the P3500s, P100, and P200s.

Challenge
To get the their home audio back in the groove, Colotti needed to replace the damaged Nuvo Players. This time around, however, he wanted a single stack of five rack-mounted Players powering all zones — eliminating the need for the P100 and P200s — protected by a single UPS. While this meant running speaker wire to the locations of the original wireless Players, a bigger worry was the heat that would be generated by five units stacked in a single cabinet. With that concern in mind, Colotti opted for Nuvo’s P4300 Professional Series Players.

Solution
Nuvo’s flexible Player Portfolio system is designed to deliver high-fidelity audio to every room of the home. Available in wired or wireless configurations, the system’s single- and multi-zone Players make it simple for integrators — or tech-savvy IT folks — to build a unified whole-home audio experience in up to 16 zones. The Player Portfolio offers a positive listening experience with built-in access to endless music options — from networked audio content and iTunes libraries, to an expansive variety of Internet radio and streaming services.

Providing 110 watts of power per zone, each rackmounted P4300 delivers high-fidelity audio for up to three independent zones. The players feature super-efficient Class D amplifiers, large side-mounted heatsinks, and no-fan designs that allow for single-space rack mounting with excellent heat dispersion, while their back-lit touchscreens support easy setup with visible system status, zones names, and more.

The Players are integrated with Alexa for voice control, while their line inputs are used to pipe audio from Denon AV receivers in two main TV viewing areas to all zones using basic headphone splitters. This is a handy feature for following live sporting events from anywhere in the house.

Results
“While our original Nuvo system was already quite impressive, five Players stacked in a cabinet generate a lot of heat, and the P3500s didn’t have the capabilities to disperse it,” says Colotti. “With their side heatsinks and backlit displays, the P4300s are better suited for a stacked rack-mount solution. My wife and I love the new system. We both work from home, so it’s put through its paces every single day — it has performed flawlessly.”

For more information, visit https://www.legrand.us/nuvo/player-portfolio.aspx.

 

Close