House audio, Elk M1G, and HS or CQC...

[Mr Spock]

I'm currently thinking about how I want to do the whole house audio. For 3rd party support (and other reasons) is seems Russound and Nuvo are most popular. I'm leaning toward the Nuvo Grand Concerto for an 8 zone system. I'd prefer not to use their touchscreens and stick to my android tablets for a unified interface with the rest of the HA system (and cost). I do want ability to do full control, view album art, playlists, etc.

I checked out the HomeSeer plugin for Nuvo and it appears to be the typical HS half-baked poorly supported software; its not been updated in 3 years. And the plugin costs $100. Not good.

Questions:
Should I use the Elk for audio control? If so, how well would this interface with HS or CQC?
Is CQC any better than HS?
Are most people just using their Nuvo touchscreens?
Is Russound any better?
Any recommendations for my goals is appreciated.

Thanks.

Extra info on my goals:
I'm in the early planning stages of a new construction 3000 Sq ft house. My current place has Homeseer and not yet decided if I want to stick with HS or possibly switch to CQC in the new place. My experiences with HS over the last 3 years has been mixed. I'm a DIY'er and fine with scripts and basic programing but not great with involved structured programing such as VB.net.

The whole system will include the usual "I want it all" features: basic security, IP cameras (ACTi), house audio, lighting (UPB), irrigation (UPB), basic HVAC, Oregon temp sensors, 3 or 4 hardwired android tablet touchscreens to interface to it all, android phone and web interface external control. Thinking of using the Elk M1G for mission critical stuff and HS/HSTouch or CQC for the rest. They all must play well together for good WAF!

 

[Dean Roddey]

I am in way too small an apartment to need multi-zone audio myself. But we have both Nuvo and Russound customers, and at least at the big picture level I don't hear either of them being unhappy with their choices. I'm sure that any system, when you get into the details, will have this, that or the other small thing that you wish were different. CQC has good drivers for both systems, so it doesn't make much difference from that perspective. And it's the kind of thing that I think I'd just have CQC directly controlling instead of trying to do that through the automation panel. I think with both of them you can set up the keypads to drive CQC actions, and can push display text out from CQC to the keypads (for those that support that kind of thing.)

You certainly shouldn't need to be doing any code writing in the CQC world to do what you want to do.