Have you considered installing a whole-house audio system, but shudder at the thought of someone cutting holes in your walls and running new wires all over the place? Integra, the high-end division of Onkyo, has welcome news for you: Your multiroom audio distribution network may already be in place.

If your home has an Ethernet computer network, you already have all the wiring you need for whole-house audio. Integra’s new Net-Tune series of products and software allows you to use a dedicated music server, or your PC, to spread your music collection through your home or listen to live Internet audio broadcasts.

Net-Tune centers around either a network-connected PC that is loaded with music and Integra’s Net-Tune software, or Integra’s NAS-2.3—a music server that stores tunes from your CDs on its own internal hard drive. Either the NAS-2.3 or your computer supplies music to the various rooms in your home via the Ethernet connection. Through Net-Tune, you can play up to 12 different tunes at once so you can listen to, say, Bach in your study while the kids listen to N’Sync in the den.

No matter if you use a PC or the NAS-2.3 as your music server, you will hear music through Integra’s NAC-2.3. The NAC-2.3 is a small device that pulls music from the PC or server, and tunes in radio broadcasts over conventional AM/FM or the Internet (provided you have a broadband Internet connection). The NAC-2.3 has an internal, 15-watt-per-channel stereo amplifier to power your speakers. Your dealer places an NAC-2.3 in any Ethernet-equipped room, connects a single network cable to the unit, then hooks up your speakers. Instantly, you have music. The NAC-2.3 also has an audio input, so you can connect another audio source, such as a CD player or TV set. A front-panel display lets you browse your music collection or select a radio station. You can also see this display on a TV screen, if the TV is connected to the NAC-2.3’s video output.

If you need to fill a large room with sound, your dealer can connect a larger amplifier to the NAC-2.3. Or, you can opt for Integra’s DTR-8.3 or DTR-7.3 receiver, both of which incorporate the functions of the NAC-2.3 but have much more powerful amplification, as well as surround-sound processing and inputs for such devices as DVD players and digital TV tuners.

I start my experience with Net-Tune by connecting an NAC-2.3 to my home network through an ordinary Cat-5 network cable, and hook up a small pair of Definitive Technology speakers. I find many of my usual Internet audio selections, including MostlyClassical.com and the omnipresent Virgin Radio, but I cannot access as many stations as I normally find using iTunes on my Macintosh computer.

I then add the NAS-2.3 server to the mix, which I feel is a better choice than using a PC as a server simply because the NAS-2.3 is much less likely to crash. (Incidentally, Integra does not offer a Mac version of Net-Tune software.) To load tunes onto NAS-2.3’s hard drive, place a CD in the server’s drawer and select “record” on the remote. I plug the NAS-2.3 into a hub, insert a CD of The Beatles’ Abbey Road, and voilà! “Here Comes The Sun” and the rest of the songs are now available on the NAC-2.3. Few people own CD collections large enough to fill the NAS-2.3—it stores as much as 1,300 hours of audio, using the same MP3 data compression algorithms that have become common for computer audio. You can also record music at full CD quality, although that reduces the recording capability to 118 hours.

Anything in my collection is now easy to locate, either on the NAC-2.3 or on the NAS-2.3 server’s front panel, and I can select tunes by album, artist or genre. (The Net-Tune’s system acquires all of this information automatically by connecting to the Gracenote CDDB database on the Internet.) The only problem with the NAS-2.3 is that it takes 20 minutes to record Abbey Road, while my Mac takes only four. If you already have a library of MP3s on your PC, you can easily transfer them through your Ethernet network with a supplied piece of software called XiVa Producer.

Connecting the DTR-8.3 receiver to the network yields a similar result; it works as smoothly as the NAC-2.3, but offers much more power and better sound quality.

In theory, you can enjoy Net-Tune even if you lack a wired Ethernet network, because Ethernet can be wireless. Although Net-Tune is not designed to operate with the 802.11b wireless networks now common in homes, Integra says preliminary testing of Net-Tune products with the new 802.11g wireless standard has produced satisfactory results. Also, the company says Net-Tune will work with home networks that transmit through ordinary AC power lines.

The lone negative to Net-Tune, as compared with a standard distributed audio system, is the need for a freestanding component in each room, but all of the benefits, including the ability to access your entire music library with ease, will outweigh that issue for many people.

If the future of multiroom audio is Net-Tune or something like it, then the future is going to be very entertaining, flexible and easy to integrate into any home. Without question, Net-Tune is a winner.