NuVo Introduces Its New Essentia Whole Home Audio System

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NuVo Introduces Its New Essentia Whole Home Audio System

NuVo Technologies is pleased to unveil its new Essentia® Whole Home Audio System. Rich with features that will excite the senses plus expand to offer the same NuVoNet capabilities that made the Grand Concerto such a simple to use programming success story. Essentia E6G will be the first multi-room audio system to boast the EnergyStar® logo, for very low energy consumption during idle time, which is considered the greatest wasted source of energy in electronics in the home today.

The System’s Features:
The Control Pad – Essentia’s new control pad brings all of the great features of NuVo’s Grand Concerto down to size—into a single box. Its sleek, simple control pad carries many of the same sought-after features of the Grand Concerto which include the following:

Polycarbonate Surface
• Surrounding the button and viewing area is optical grade polycarbonate material for durable, fault free operation.
• Polycarbonate is the same material used in optical industry for eyeglass lenses. Unlike standard plastics, it is precision manufactured to be perfectly flat, greatly improving visualization and general pristine look and feel.
• The extremely durable and scratch resistant material also makes the control pad water resistant. It’s virtually impenetrable construction makes it well suited for covered outdoor areas.
• Rubber membrane under buttons further support water resistance.
• Frosted Plexiglas buttons

OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode) Display
• Provides bright contrasting light making it readable in a variety of settings, including outdoors in bright sunlight conditions.
• Up to 55,000 hours lifetime under standard use conditions.
• Up to 4 readable character lines that also provide flexibility in size of character height (single, double and triple) that respond to the needs of different menu modes.
• Wide viewing angle. A natural by-product of its high-contrast light active pixels (self-illuminating), the display can be viewed from angles up to 130°.
• Added feature of display at Essentia pricing makes for supremely high installer selling benefit.
• Low energy consumption of OLED contributes to energy efficient operation—less power consumed than LCD or VFD.

Unique Tactile Buttons
• Coplanar, Plexiglas buttons disappear flush to the black polycarbonate surface encased around them. This makes for sleek design, which offers a high quality look and feel, but is more affordable to the cost sensitive consumer.
• Flush surface provides for simple cleaning as well as easy button recognition.
Additional Keypad Features
• Essentia Control Pads can be used with the Grand Concerto system in tight areas where the single gang format is preferred.
• Ships with 4 different color trim-plates (white almond, ivory and black).

System Details
• 6 Source, 6 Zone System with 40 watts per zone system, also expandable to 12 zones.
• Philips Class D amplification provides cool running, power efficiency in high output operation. This reduces heat output by as much as 100 watts over an equivalent Class AB amplifier.
• State-of-the-art, switching power supply further reduces heat output, thus protecting the system against equipment failure, the primary cause of issues with any system.
• Single Rack height. No other 6-source, 6 zone system available on the market today fits in a single vertical space on a rack. Lightweight unit weighs only 6.5 lbs. This trim-line packaging is made possible by the volumetric efficiency of the new switching power supply design.
• Communicates with all NuVo sources, including all T2 Tuner configurations, NV-M3 Music Server and NuVoDocks for iPod, uses new E6G version of NuVoNet Configuration software.
• New Essentia version of Allport™ connection hub consolidates all speaker connections into one connection hub. Allport cable and Network cable included.
• Two zones provided with line-level outputs; both fixed and variable. These and trigger inputs allow for flexibility during use with an external amplifier, volume controls and additional speakers.
• Bi-directional and RS-232 control interface allows control from most home automation systems.

Essentia is the first in our industry segment to achieve the energy consumption requirements of EnergyStar. EnergyStar covers virtually all areas of the home from office equipment, to appliances, to heating and cooling, to lighting. In a report from EnergyStar in July 2003, in the home electronics category, there has been some progress made, mostly in TV’s and VCR’s, which range from a 46% to 94% (respectively) rate of adoption of the EnergyStar certification. The overall category of Audio, on the other hand, represents a 69% opportunity for improvement, yet only 31% of audio manufacturers have begun the adoption process. And, no Audio Equipment in the Whole House Audio category has achieved this plateau.

According to EnergyStar, Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Energy, in the average home, 40% of all electricity used to power home electronics is consumed while the products are turned off. Across the US, this equals the annual output of 17 power plants.

In light of increasing consumer awareness of global warming issues and the general public demanding more “Green” solutions, NuVo responds to the stringent EnergyStar requirements with the new Essentia. The single measurement that EnergyStar mandates for home electronics is energy consumption while equipment is in “standby” mode. EnergyStar also states that Americans spend more money to power home audio products when turned off than when actually in use.

• Essentia consumes less than 1 watt of power in standby mode, exceeding the EnergyStar requirements for standby power consumption.
• Consumes only 10% of the power of the original Essentia in standby.
• First whole home audio system of its kind to provide a truly energy efficient alternative to the Green conscience homeowner. Perfect for installation in increasingly popular Green spec’d homes.

The Essentia E6G is available now and has an MSRP of $2299.

Source: AVRev News