Ft. Collins, CO, October 4, 2011 – CasaTunes®, a leader in multi-room music solutions, today announced an update to its CasaTunes software bringing several unique capabilities to CasaTunes, including integration of A/V Receivers and third party music components, iTunes in the Cloud support and Android tablet support.
Seamless integration of A/V receivers into a whole house music system continues to be a challenge for many installers. Installer solutions to this problem vary, but often include installing redundant amplifiers, speakers and switches, or leveraging the A/V receiver but requiring the homeowner to use separate controls for controlling the A/V receiver and the whole house music system. The new CasaTunes release provides a simple and elegant solution to this problem, allowing installers to use the capabilities of their A/V receivers and yet control their music, just as if these rooms were any other room in the home. In fact, whether the music is being driven through an A/V receiver or from a multi-zone amplifier is completely transparent to the homeowner.
CasaTunes ships with out-of-the-box support for several popular A/V receivers including Denon, Harman Kardon, Marantz, Onkyo/Integra and Pioneer, and installers can add support for other receivers by creating a simple text based control file. The CasaTunes solution works with receivers that support Serial (RS-232) or network (IP) control. For IR-only receivers, CasaTunes provides similar functionality when using CasaTunes in combination with BitWise Controls. A/V integration is supported on all CasaTunes, ChannelVision, NuVo and Russound multi-room systems.
“In most homes where CasaTunes is installed, we typically find the homeowner has one or more home theaters or stand alone A/V receivers they want to use these as part of their whole house music solution,” said David Krinker, CEO of CasaTunes. “With the latest release of CasaTunes, we have made this extremely easy for the installer to implement, and seamless for the homeowner to control.”
Another challenge installer’s face is integrating existing music components with whole house music systems, for example, satellite receivers or cable set top boxes. By partnering with BitWise Controls, CasaTunes enables installers to create custom graphical user interfaces (GUI) for virtually any component, using BitWise Controls Project Editor. These graphical user interfaces can then be displayed within the CasaTunes iOS, Android and browser interfaces.
For Apple’s iTunes in the Cloud, CasaTunes automatically and instantly detects when a new song or other audio file is added to your iTunes in the Cloud account and enables those tracks to be accessed and played via CasaTunes anywhere in the home.
CasaTunes has released the first Android tablet app and App Widget for controlling multi-room audio systems. The CasaTunes app is available for all tablets running Android version 3.0 or later and makes full use of the tablet’s features for easy and complete control of your CasaTunes Music Server. Advanced features include Google’s voice search, which allows the user to use voice commands to quickly search for music across all of CasaTunes’ music services (including iTunes, Windows Music, iPod and various internet music services). The CasaTunes App Widget is a companion app, and provides a quick overview of the music playing in a room, while consuming minimal screen space. The apps are available for download from the Android Market.
CasaTunes offers a variety of complete multi-source hardware/software music solutions for homes starting at 6 rooms up to 48-room installations. The CasaTunes Music Server offers advanced multi-streaming capabilities, including simultaneous streams of Windows, iTunes (in the Cloud), streaming multiple iPod devices, AirPlay support, and support for various Internet music and radio services. Incorporating unique matrix switching hardware, CasaTunes music servers can instantly and in perfect sync, switch any of nine available streams to any combination of rooms.
Version 2.9 of CasaTunes is a free upgrade for existing CasaTunes customers and is now available for downloading. It is included with the line CasaTunes Music Servers, or can be purchased separately for $478.
About CasaTunes
CasaTunes designs flexible wired and wireless multi-room audio systems for distributing iTunes and Windows Media disc based music, Internet radio, and Internet based music services throughout the home. The CasaTunes multi-room systems support as few as 3 and as many as 24-wired rooms, with up to an additional 10 wireless rooms. CasaTunes also offers music streamers designed to supply streams to and control of RTI, Audio Authority, Channel Vision, Nuvo, Russound, and SpeakerCraft multi-room systems. CasaTunes systems integrate well with popular control systems such as Roomie, On Controls, RTI, Control4, Loxone and Key Digital. Founded in 2006, CasaTunes is a privately held entity headquartered in Ft. Collins, Colorado with offices in Florida.
Visit www.CasaTunes.com for more information.
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CasaTunes® is a registered trademark of CasaTunes, Inc. in the United States and all other brands, products or service names are or may be trademarks, registered trademarks or service marks of, and used to identify, products or services of their respective owners.
Media Contact for CasaTunes:
Jan Jahosky
407.331.4699
jan@jahosky.com
