Music in eight rooms and looks to match the iPod.

The iPod has had the same transformative effect on multiroom audio that the Mac had on computers: Both changed an unfriendly, daunting entity into something the average person could relate to. While many manufacturers have brought the iPod’s basic functionality to their remotes and keypads, few have captured the look and feel.

Count NuVo Technologies among the few who have escaped the black hole of generic white faceplates.

At a glance, NuVo’s new, wireless multiroom remote looks a bit like iPods from a few years ago. Its monochromatic display sits atop a cursor control that resembles the iPod’s famous click wheel. Its gloss-black/matte-silver finish looks like something Apple (or Bang & Olufsen) might have dreamed up. And like the iPod, the NuVo remote conjures lots of entertainment options with just a few motions of your hand.

The $799 NV-WCPS remote is an option for NuVo’s Grand Concerto and Essentia EG6 multiroom audio systems. The remote comes with a charging dock and a receiver that interfaces it with the rest of the system. Additional remotes cost $599 each.

The remote works in any room—even in rooms where the system isn’t hooked up—because it uses radio-frequency transmission rather than infrared.

I recently spent a week using it with a Grand Concerto system set up in three zones (bedroom, kitchen and living room).

The remote’s Zone button brings you to a list where you select the room you want to control. A Menu button calls up a list of control functions. You can select a source device, like a docked iPod, a music server or a radio tuner. You can browse the music on an iPod or music server by artist, album, song, genre, etc. Y

ou can control system functions like a sleep timer and treble and bass controls. And, of course, you can adjust the volume in each zone, and turn each zone (or the whole system) on and off.

Because it has cursor keys instead of a click wheel, the remote works more like the personal music players made by Samsung and SanDisk than like an iPod. Finding the music you want using the cursor and OK buttons is easy. It’s great to be able to walk around the house with a little remote in your pocket, changing the music in seconds whenever the mood strikes and from wherever you happen to be sitting.

The remote does have one quirk, though: The Menu button works as a “back” button when you’re controlling most functions, but not after you’ve selected a tune. So once a tune is playing, you can’t back out to select a different tune or album by that artist—you have to go back to the main menu.

Wisely, NuVo built almost exactly the same control system into its $349 Grand Concerto in-wall keypads. The physical arrangement of the buttons is different, but otherwise, operation is identical.

Like most modern kitchen appliances, the keypads use a capacitive touchpanel instead of ordinary buttons, so they resist dirt and moisture.

To my bulky fingers, the touchpanel was a little oversensitive, but after a few days I pretty much adapted. Truth be told, though, I used the remote almost exclusively during my time with the Grand Concerto system because it’s so much more convenient.

The main device that the remote and keypads communicate through is the $2,999 NV-18GM Concerto multiroom controller, a rack-mountable component measuring a little less than 4 inches high.

The controller incorporates six 40-watts-per-channel stereo amplifiers. They’re digital amps, so they run cool.

I found the NV-18GM’s amps powerful enough to push a pair of rather power-hungry Sunfire CRM-2 speakers to a satisfying level, although the amps did distort when I pushed it to party level.

With an ordinary set of ceiling speakers or outdoor speakers, there should be enough power here to play as loud as you want.

If you need more, you can connect a larger amp like NuVo’s 100-watts-per-channel P2100. The NV-18GM also has line outputs for two additional zones, so by adding a couple of stereo amps you can bring the system up to eight independent zones of music.

The NV-18GM accepts as many as six audio source devices through its stereo analog inputs. NuVo provided me with one of its $399 NV-RIPS iPod docks and its $2,299 NV-M3-160 music server. The company also makes AM/FM and satellite radio tuners that will interface with the system; station data will show up on the remote and the keypads.

The music server is a rack-mountable component with a 160-gigabyte hard drive (a 500-GB version is also available). It can provide up to three independent streams of music, so you can listen to your favorites while two other family members enjoy theirs in different rooms.

Loading it up is a piece of cake—just connect it to a PC running Windows Media Player, and click Sync when the dialog box appears. It’ll all be transferred to the server, ready for playback from any keypad or remote.

I thoroughly enjoyed using this system in the week I had it. It’s probably the nicest-looking multiroom system I’ve used, and it’s at least as easy to use as any I’ve encountered.

You probably won’t care about my comments, though, once you get your hands on the wireless remote: With just a few button punches, it tells its own story far better than I can in 900 words.

PRICE: $7,543, as tested
CONTACT: 866.796.4904, nuvotechnologes.com