It’s been just over a year since Yamaha announced the new range of MusicCast products, the technology has advanced, new product has been released and Yamaha are already looking ahead to the future of MusicCast.
For some brands, their multi-room system is just an arm of what they do, sitting within a small eco-system of its own. But this isn’t the case with MusicCast, it’s quickly becoming part of every Yamaha product makes. For Yamaha, the future is bright for not just multi-room music but multi-room audio distribution and streaming.
So what is MusicCast? Simply put, it’s Yamaha’s wireless music streaming system, their answer to multi-room. You might be forgiven for thinking it’s just another multi-room system with a few speakers and a couple of soundbars on offer; but you’d be very much mistaken as MusicCast can do so much more.
Every product with a MusicCast badge is equipped with Bluetooth, Airplay and WiFi on board as standard. Some of the products you may already be installing are probably equipped with MusicCast. What’s more is the product range that’s part of MusicCast is growing, there are over 30 different MusicCast products currently available from Yamaha, with close to 45 including anything discontinued from 2015. That’s an awful lot of product to choose from but the overwhelming benefit is that you can choose the right product to suit the situation. If it’s a bedroom, there are wireless speakers for that. A dining room, how about something with CD? A full blown home theatre system with Dolby Atmos, DTS:X and multi-room? There’s a few you can choose from.
It doesn’t end there though, the MusicCast system allows you to stream any audio from one device to another just by linking the two together in the app. So that’s all the TV audio coming from a soundbar can be linked with the kitchen speaker, or the CD playback from the HiFi can be sent to a soundbase in the other room. What’s more is all of this can be done with your existing Bluetooth equipment, if your customer has a Bluetooth speaker or some headphones they can stream everything the MusicCast device is playing over Bluetooth already. In exactly the same way, they can enjoy TV sound wirelessly through headphones for when they need to keep the volume down.
Of course Yamaha can do everything else you’d expect like different music in different rooms, link them together, separate etc., but there’s customisation too. You can set pictures of the products or rooms as the tiles in the app, or customise input names and room names, re-order everything or even switch off inputs that aren’t being used. The app is slick and easy to use too so every member of the family can get to grips with it quickly. Naturally over the past year Yamaha have made a whole bunch of advances in the app and with firmware updates include multiple room volume control from one screen, mute all, power off all rooms, app shortcuts within MusicCast, the new queue function, Qobuz support and even adding stereo pairing to WX wireless speakers.
Best yet is all MusicCast products have an open API for installers to use in their projects with other control systems like Control4, Crestron, RTI or anything you can think of. The API documents are available freely from our technical support so feel free to get in contact and start integrating Yamaha MusicCast products together with your heating, lighting or anything else you can think of.
For more information on MusicCast, contact Yamaha on 01908 366700 or email. You can also visit the MusicCast website.