Whole Home Audio - Nuvo Grand Concerto

Posted by Jas Manghera
Wednesday, September 5, 2007

Recently I acquired a Nuvo Grand Concerto (GC) to serve as a whole home audio unit for the new home I’m building. I plan on having 6 zones of audio, with MP3, AM/FM, music fully controllable in each. Since the house isn’t quite finished and my technogeek kicked in, I decided to open the box and connect the system together to verify it works.



The Nuvo manual is very straight forward and to the point, with several diagrams for quick reference, which great for guys like me who plug in cables first and read the manual later.


After starting everything up I found the GC came from the factory with version 2.06 which is not bad (but not the latest either). So I decided to upgrade the GC firmware to the latest version, 2.10.

For this I needed to download the GC 2.10 configurator software available from Nuvo in the ProZone section of their website.
If you don’t have .NET 1.1 installed you’ll need to install it before you install the 2.10 Configuration Software, you can download it here. With my PC connected to the GC via a DB9 Male/Female serial cable I loaded up the Configurator software and started playing around with it.

There is a ton of things you can do with the configurator, and while most of these features are available via the keypads themselves, the configurator application does make initial setup much more convenient. I won’t get into the details of everything you can do, because quite frankly it’s a lot, and that’s what the manual is for anyway.

Once I tweaked the names of sources, zones, and other minor things I hit “download to GC” and let the firmware upgrade process begin. It took roughly 1 minute to update, I then proceeded to plug in one of the keypads which displayed a message “2.06” at first my heart sank and I thought, “oh no it didn’t work” then the screen turned black (cue the scary halloween music). After a few seconds I saw the firmware updating message, and for what seemed like a long time (my brother says 15 seconds) the keypad rebooted and displayed version 2.10 – success!!

Now there were a couple parts during this update were I was tempted to press buttons on the keypad and figure out what was going on. My advice is if you are impatient such as myself - take a couple deep breaths, count to twenty and let the device do its thing and don’t interfere.

To quote that weird cuddly-toy-guy on American Inventor “everything will be alright...”

So there you have it, I tested the system to make sure it was all functional, and successfully updated the GC from version 2.06 to 2.10. This blog entry has become longer than I thought it would, and I haven’t even discussed things like sound quality, feedback display, overall design etc. there is just so much to write about. Stay tuned for my next entry where I’ll hopefully get around to talking about all these issues and more.

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4 comments:

Anonymous said...
May 7, 2009 6:32 AM  

I'm thinking about buying the Nuvo GC system. Would love to hear how you like the system - particularly how you like the keypads, as I can't find anywhere nearby where I can check them out.

Anonymous said...
May 7, 2009 6:34 AM  

Also, what you think of the sound quality, and any negatives to the system or its sound.

Jas Manghera said...
May 7, 2009 10:26 AM  

When I bought the Nuvo GC system the keypads were the best that I had seen at that time. I have since sold my house and left the system in that place for the new owner to enjoy. They have capacitive touch and the display is very bright (this is adjustable), I even had one keypad located outside on the patio deck and had no issues viewing the keypad in direct sunlight.

In terms of sound quality I did have a few minor issues: I have found that adding non-Nuvo sources into the GC needed amplification otherwise you get poor output. Nuvo sources like the AM/FM tuner or MP3 tuner are fine.

There are lots of features, and regular software updates to provide more functionality. I really enjoyed party mode; guests would see the nuvo system for the first time and pick it up quickly. Within a minute or two guest are choosing music and what not it's really satisfying.

Hope this helps.

Anonymous said...
May 13, 2009 1:04 AM  

Hi - Thank you for those thoughts. Is the non-Nuvo source volume the only sound quality issue, or did you have any other issues with the sound quality?

To clarify, re:non-Nuvo sources. Were you adding a line level source like a standard piece of audio equipment (i.e., a home CD player, etc.), or was it something different (like a portable audio player or computer stereo output from the headphone jack)? Did you happen to have a Sonos Zoneplayer hooked up to it? I am trying to figure out if it was something that was due to a piece of equipment you used with a lower powered line-out, or if the Nuvo system requires a higher input level than is standard for home audio equipment?

Also, were you able to work around the non-Nuvo source input level issue? I.e., buy something that amplifies the line level output, add an external speaker level amplifier to the system, etc.

I'm asking the detail b/c I was not planning on using the Nuvo sources, but instead was going to use a Sonos player for most listening purposes, and possibly a home CD player as well.

Lastly, did you go with a different system in your new home?

Thank you very much for your thoughts.

-Dale

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