CasaTunes Software

Your CasaTunes Software has been specifically designed for our CasaTunes XLi or CasaTunes XLe based multi-room audio hardware systems, as well as being designed to work with several other popular multi-room music systems.

This powerful software solution integrates an advanced Music Server as well as enabling control of your whole house audio system from anywhere in your home. CasaTunes makes it possible for you to listen to your favorite PC based Windows or iTunes music collection, music from your iPod, or internet radio in any room in your home.

With CasaTunes' support for playing Windows protected music files, you can purchase, or subscribe to an endless collection of music from multiple online music stores.

If your multi-room music system includes a compatible tuner device, CasaTunes makes it easy to quickly tune to, or search for, your favorite stations.

With CasaTunes each family member can select and control the music they want to listen to. You can control CasaTunes from a browser, using Windows Media Center, a Windows Media Center extender, or using certain Russound or Nuvo keypads.

When you are ready to party, you will find CasaTunes ability to show you and configure all the rooms in your home, and its ability to group multiple rooms and control them as one, will meet all your party needs.

Best of all CasaTunes is designed to be easy to install, setup and maintain.

So read on for more details ... then take CasaTunes for a spin.

PC or Media Center? 32 or 64 Bit? Vista or Windows XP?

The simple answer is yes!

CasaTunes not only runs on Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium, Business and Ultimate, Windows XP Professional, Windows XP Media Center Edition ... but CasaTunes also runs on Windows Home Server and Windows Server 2003.

Although Microsoft Windows Media Center is not a requirement, you can optionally configure CasaTunes to integrate with Media Center, and with Media Center extenders, and even with other networked Media Center machines.

... And yes, CasaTunes works with both 32 and 64 bit versions of Vista

... And, because CasaTunes was designed to minimize processor overhead, there is no need to use a dedicated PC as your CasaTunes machine.

... And no, there are no additional costs for multiple clients.

CasaTunes Music Server Features

We designed CasaTunes for the whole family. To this end, you will discover that CasaTunes uses the familiar Microsoft Windows Media Center-like User Interface, a proven, easy to use User Interface. So when the family is ready to listen to their own music they will find CasaTunes makes it easy to quickly browse and search their music and select their favorite songs, whether selecting music by Album, Artist, Genre, Song Title, or Playlist.

With CasaTunes’ advanced music server capabilities, you can play not only your Windows and Windows DRM protected music collection, but also your iPod or iTunes music collection, and internet radio.

Using our CasaTunes XL solutions provides the ability for you to play up to five different playlists at the same time, so now each family member can listen to their own music in their own space.

CasaTunes' built-in support for Microsoft's Digital Rights Management technology allows you to play Windows protected (WMA) music files throughout your home. Now you can purchase or subscribe to an endless selection of online music from several online music stores.

Built-in Apple iPod®, iPhone® and iTouch® Support

Listening to music on your iPod or iPod-like device is easy with CasaTunes.

Simply plug your iPod, iPhone or iTouch in to a USB port on your CasaTunes Multi-Room Music Server PC, and the software will automatically detect the presence of your docked iPod, enabling you to browse and play back music from your, or your friends iPod, including iPod cover art, if your iPod supports this.

… And using our CasaTunes XL hardware you can even play more than one different iPod playlist from a single iPod at the same time. A CasaTunes first!

Note: CasaTunes supports playback of iTunes Plus (non-protected) music
Apple iPod, iTouch and iPhone are all registered trademarks of Apple Computer Inc.

CasaTunesSync for iTunes

We realize that most people are not going to install iTunes and manage their iTunes music collection from a shared PC or Media Center. After all, each family member does have their own iTunes music collection, don’t they?

So we designed CasaTunes to allow you to synchronize all your family’s iTunes music collections on one or more desktops and laptops in your home network with your CasaTunes multi-room music server. We call it CasaTunesSync for iTunes.

Best of all you can select whether to aggregate all your iTunes music from all your PCs in to a single library, or create a separate library for each PC and provide a truly personal experience!

Note: CasaTunes supports playback of iTunes Plus (non-protected) music.

Powered by SHOUTCast™ Radio

The latest version of CasaTunes now features robust Internet Radio support by partnering with SHOUTcast™ Radio.

What is SHOUTcast™ Radio?

SHOUTcast™ Radio is one of the largest directories of professionally and community programmed online radio stations in the world. Today SHOUTcast™ Radio features over 25,000 stations from around the globe. If you're into popular or indie music, or want to check out local or world programming, you're sure to find something you like on SHOUTcast™ Radio.

SHOUTcast™ Radio also provides free-of-charge audio broadcasting software for those who want to create a radio station. It permits anyone on the internet to broadcast audio from their computer to listeners across the Internet or any other IP-based network (Office LANs, college campuses, etc.).

The underlying technology for audio delivery for SHOUTcast™ Radio is MPEG Layer 3, also known as MP3 technology. The SHOUTcast™ Radio system can deliver audio in a live situation, or can deliver audio on-demand for archived broadcasts, if made available by the broadcaster.

Tuners

Although internet radio is great, not all radio programming is available through the internet.  So CasaTunes supports several AM/FM, XM or Sirius tuners from several vendors including Onkyo, Nuvo and Russound.

To provide a real custom experience, we also provide you the flexibility to manage the station names of your favorite AM, FM, and if necessary even your XM and Sirius radio stations using our CasaTunes Radio Manager.  In fact, with Radio Manager, you can even add and manage your own selection of internet radio stations.

With CasaTunes' tuner integration, the software will display the station or channel your tuner is currently tuned to, and possibly station programming information depending on the tuner’s capabilities ... and with CasaTunes, selecting or searching for your favorites stations to listen to is easy. Want to listen to a different station? Simply enter in the station, or select a station from the Radio Manager list, by Category, or from your Favorites list. Want to search for a different station? Simply click the Tune, Seek or Scan buttons.

Multiple Browsers Supported

CasaTunes is known for the simplicity and ease of use of it's User Interface.  In the latest version of our Software, the user interface has been enhanced to be fully cross-browser.  CasaTunes now supports all major browsers including Apple’s Safari, Mozilla’s FireFox, Opera and Microsoft Internet Explorer 6+.

To support the various different flavors of browser devices with different screen resolutions, we have also added the capability to configure the screen layout based on the device's screen resolution.

Advanced Features

If you ever tried configuring your system for a party, you know it can be time consuming and often frustrating. No matter how well you setup your system, you find yourself running around from room to room making adjustments to get it right. To eliminate all this running around, why not use CasaTunes' Zone (Room) Grouping and All Zones (Rooms) View features.

Zone groups allow you to group multiple rooms in a large listening area, or setup multiple rooms for a party.  Best of all you can configure your setup exactly as you want it, set the volume levels to the desired levels, and record it as a Zone Group.  And any number of rooms in a Zone Group can be configured as a master, and any change to a master zone affects all the rooms in the Zone Group.

So with our All Zones (Rooms) view you can quickly view and configure the settings for all the rooms in a home, and then you can use our Zone Grouping features to manage these rooms as if they were a single zone.  Simply turn the Zone Group on, and all rooms in the group are turned on, change the source and volume from the zone group or a master zone and all rooms in the zone group are adjusted accordingly.

What about waking up or going to sleep with your favorite tunes?

Now you can with CasaTunes Sleep and Wakeup options.

Install & Setup

We designed CasaTunes to work right ‘out-of-the-box’, so to speak. So to simplify these tasks, we have worked hard to streamline installing, configuring and updating the CasaTunes software.

When you install CasaTunes, the installation application will automatically download the latest version of the product from the CasaTunes web site, so you can always be sure you are installing the latest CasaTunes release as well as verifying you have the components that CasaTunes requires installed.

Installing our CasaTunes XL solutions has been further streamlined.  Simply install the CasaTunes XL hardware in your CasaTunes PC, insert the CasaTunes XL CD and follow our simple 2 step installation process … Once completed, you will be prompted to run the Setup Wizard, which will automatically configure your setup leaving you the simple remaining task of naming your rooms (or zones).

If you are not using our CasaTunes XL hardware, then the first time you start CasaTunes, the Setup Wizard will guide you through the setup process and have you up and running within minutes … Later if needed, you can run the Setup wizard again to reconfigure your existing setup.

To update your software, simply re-install the CasaTunes software and it will automatically preserve your settings.  Once the update has completed, CasaTunes will automatically restart playing any previously playing play lists, minimizing any inconvenience.

Other Hardware

In addition to our CasaTunes XL based solutions, the CasaTunes Software also supports several other popular multi-room music systems from Russound and Nuvo Technologies. Depending on your multi-room music system's capabilities, CasaTunes will seamlessly integrate with your existing system keypads to enable you to use your keypads to browse and select music from your music collection, as well as control play back, including stopping, pausing, and skipping songs in your play list, and displaying the song title, artist and album information for the current track that is playing.

Now instead of having to dedicate a sound card for each input source on your multi-room controller, you can leverage CasaTunes advanced capabilities to re-configure a generic 5.1 or 7.1 multi-channel sound card to provide 3 or 4 stereo input streams.

CasaTunes supports the latest Nuvo and Russound multi-room audio systems including Nuvo’s Grand Concerto and the new Essentia, as well as Russound's ACA (Sphere), CAV, CAM, CAA, and CAS systems. 

Using Nuvo’s recently introduced NuvoNet Adapter, it is now possible for CasaTunes to seamlessly integrate with Nuvo’s new OLED keypads used with the Grand Concerto and Essentia. Simply press the keypad Menu button when a CasaTunes source is selected, and you will be rewarded with the same rich menu options available through the CasaTunes User Interface.

You can also use one or more Barix Exstreamer network music player devices to play your PC based music ... but more importantly using these devices can greatly simplify setting up your system for use with CasaTunes. With these devices, you can physically locate your CasaTunes Multi-Room Music Server PC anywhere in the home, and locate your networkable Barix Exstreamer devices next to your multi-room music system controller ... and these devices also include a builtin RS232 serial port which can be used to control your multi-room music system. Just keep in mind that these devices only support MP3 music playback.

For a complete list of supported hardware click here