Crestron Audio Video Systems — NVX Video & NAX Audio Distribution
World-Class Audio Video Distribution to Any Room in the Property
The way audio and video moves around a luxury home has changed fundamentally with Crestron NVX and NAX. Where previous generations of AV distribution required dedicated matrix switchers with fixed inputs and outputs, Crestron’s AV-over-IP approach uses the property’s data network as the distribution backbone — meaning any source anywhere in the property can be routed to any display or speaker anywhere else, with no fixed routing constraints, no signal degradation over distance and no practical limit on the number of zones the system supports. A source installed in a plant room in the basement appears on a touchpanel in the penthouse master bedroom and a screen at the pool, simultaneously, at full 4K HDR quality. Custom Controls have been designing and installing Crestron AV systems since 1998 and are five-time Crestron Integration Award winners.
Crestron Home
Custom Systems
Lighting
Programming
Support
Crestron NVX — 4K Video Distribution Over IP
Crestron NVX is an AV-over-IP system that encodes video at source and distributes it across a standard IP network to any number of receiving endpoints simultaneously. The encoder sits alongside the source in the rack — a Sky box, Kaleidescape server, Apple TV, gaming console or any HDMI device — and the decoder sits behind each display anywhere in the property. Both communicate over Cat6 or fibre, the same infrastructure the property’s data network uses.
The practical effect is that there are no fixed matrix connections to manage. Any encoder can feed any decoder or group of decoders at any time, controlled entirely through the Crestron programme. A client watching a recording in the master bedroom can continue it in the kitchen without losing their place. The same live sport can appear on every screen in the house simultaneously. NVX handles 4K HDR at HDCP 2.2 — no quality compromise at any distance, across any number of displays.
For large properties and multi-building estates, NVX is particularly powerful. A source rack in a central plant room serves every building on the estate over fibre runs — the same source library available at the main house, the guest cottage and the pool house, with no need for duplicated equipment in each location.
Crestron NAX — Multi-Room Audio at Any Scale
Crestron NAX takes the same IP-based distribution approach to audio. NAX amplifiers are placed close to their speaker loads — in ceiling voids, in local equipment cupboards — rather than being centralised in a rack. Each amplifier channel is independently addressable over the IP network, receives its audio stream digitally, and drives its speakers with no analogue signal path between the source and the amplifier output.
Each NAX channel can play a completely independent audio source simultaneously — one zone plays Spotify, another plays a radio station, a third plays the audio track from the NVX video source in the same room. In a large estate with forty audio zones across multiple buildings, each zone is independently controllable, groupable for parties and accessible from any Crestron interface in the property or from the Crestron app anywhere in the world.
NAX also integrates natively with streaming services. Each amplifier channel includes built-in streaming capability — so music can be delivered to any zone without a separate streaming device per room. Sonos and Bluesound zones sit alongside NAX zones in the same Crestron interface, giving clients access to whichever platform they prefer from a single consistent control point.
Case Study: NVX and NAX in Practice, Primrose Hill
This four-floor Primrose Hill townhouse shows NVX and NAX distribution working exactly as designed: 8 audio zones and 4 video zones, all drawing from a single centralised rack rather than equipment scattered room to room. Every video zone reaches the same centralised Virgin Media TiVo and Apple TV sources over the property’s IP network; audio zones stream independently from an Autonomic MMS digital media server, with local and international radio available in any room alongside the client’s own collection.
One button press joins the master bedroom suite or the open-plan family room, dining room and kitchen together for entertaining, while the formal living room runs its own retractable-screen cinema setup independently — the entire property controlled from a single Crestron iPad interface, exactly the flexibility NVX and NAX distribution is built to deliver. Read the full case study →
Case Study: NVX and NAX at Estate Scale, Dubai
Where Primrose Hill shows NVX and NAX working across one townhouse, this two-villa Dubai estate shows the same technology at the scale it was genuinely built for — 72 audio zones and 32 video zones, all served from eight centralised Crestron processors rather than duplicated equipment in each building. A source connected once in the main plant room reaches any villa, any room, over the estate’s own fibre and Cat6 backbone, exactly the “no duplicated equipment” advantage this page describes for multi-building properties.
The installation went on to win Best International Project in EMEA at the Crestron Integration Awards — recognition specifically for the quality of the AV design and programming behind a system this large actually working reliably at every one of its 104 zones. Read the full case study →
Kaleidescape Integration
For home cinema installations, Crestron integrates natively with Kaleidescape — the reference-quality movie server that stores and plays back films at full uncompressed Blu-ray quality with lossless Dolby Atmos audio. The Kaleidescape movie list appears on the Crestron touchpanel; selecting a film triggers the full cinema scene — projector on, screen deployed, processor set to the correct input, lighting dimmed, blinds closed — without the client touching anything other than the film title. Read more about Kaleidescape →
Whole-Home AV — Our Approach
The design of a Crestron AV system begins with understanding how the household actually uses media — not specifying hardware. We establish which sources the family uses daily, which rooms need independent control, which spaces are used together and when, and what the interface needs to feel like for non-technical users. The source library, the routing logic, the grouping behaviour, the naming conventions and the scene triggers are all designed before any equipment is ordered.
Every Crestron AV rack we build is pre-built and pre-programmed at our workshop. Sources are connected, routing is tested, streaming services are configured and the programme is verified against the design documentation before the rack leaves our facility. On-site commissioning involves connecting the rack to the building’s network and AV endpoints, confirming all displays and speakers are operating correctly, and walking through the finished interface with the client. It does not involve building a system from components on site.
Five-Time Crestron Integration Award Winners — Unique in EMEA
Five Crestron Integration Awards, won in five consecutive years. No other installer in EMEA has done it. The awards are judged by Crestron itself against entries from across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Our award-winning entries were a Dubai estate with eight processors and 72 audio zones, a whole-home Derby lighting scheme built entirely on Crestron’s own fittings, two wins for Best High Rise in Europe at Claridge’s and the Beetham Tower, and the first Crestron Digital Media installation in the UK, on Baker Street. Open any award below to see the project behind it.
Best International Project — A Whole-Estate Crestron Installation, Dubai
Our most celebrated Crestron case study — and the project that won us the Crestron Integration Award for Best International Project — is a complete Crestron system spanning two large villas, extensive gardens, a swimming pool, a basketball court, a lake and a stream on a private estate in Dubai. Eight Crestron processors provide integrated control throughout, distributing audio to 72 zones, video to 32 zones and managing well over 400 lighting channels across both villas and the grounds. Five surround sound zones, five Kaleidescape movie servers, four Apple TVs, 24 audio sources and a full Crestron Sonnex audio distribution system serve the family villa, the guest villa, staff areas, offices and classrooms simultaneously.
The scope is perhaps best illustrated by its details: the basketball court has four cabinet speakers mounted on the floodlights with two sunken subwoofers; the garden fire pits are Crestron-controlled; the gym features Artcoustic speakers enhanced by subwoofers; and the master bedroom suite houses a bespoke Stax headphone system with a valve amplifier and DaVinci DAC for private listening. The dedicated home cinema room in the family villa seats eight in Cineak chairs with backlit Onyx tables, with a 3.5m screen and 17 channels of surround sound — one of the most comprehensive Crestron installations ever delivered in the residential market. Read the full case study →
Best Lighting Control & Design — A Whole-Home Lighting Installation, Derby
Where the Dubai estate shows what Crestron can do at maximum scale, this new-build home in the Derby countryside shows what it can do with lighting alone, done properly — the project that won us the Crestron Integration Award for Best Lighting Control & Design, and the first installation in the UK to use Crestron’s own dimmable LED fittings end-to-end, with nothing else involved in the lighting. Over 350 fittings across 200+ channels — each drawing roughly 18 watts while matching the output of a 50-watt halogen downlight — are managed through six distributed lighting racks for clean cabling and full redundancy. The client calculated that the entire house now uses the same lighting energy previously used by just the kitchen and dining room alone. Scenes, scheduling and remote access are available from the wall touchpanels, more than 50 keypads or an iPad, and every keypad is custom-engraved so each button says what it does.
Lighting sits alongside 24 audio zones and 16 video zones over Crestron Digital Media, full heating and air conditioning control, gate intercom distributed via touchpanels throughout the property, and a complete monitored security and CCTV system with automatic camera-follow logic — every part of it native Crestron, controlled from the same wall touchpanels and iPad interfaces used for everything else in the home. Read the full case study →
Best High Rise in Europe — Claridge’s Hotel Penthouses, Mayfair
Working inside the listed Claridge’s Hotel, we installed Crestron-controlled Loewe multimedia systems in two penthouse apartments of three rooms each — the project that won the Crestron Integration Award for Best High Rise in Europe. The interiors are listed, so no new cable routes could be created and nothing could be chased, drilled or rewired. Every decision about equipment and control started with the building rather than the product catalogue.
Every room has a Loewe LED TV and Blu-ray player. In the living rooms, 46-inch Loewe TVs are paired with upgraded audio: the Individual Sound Projector in one apartment and stand-mounted stereo speakers in the other, both supported by subwoofers. Wireless control removed the need for wall-mounted keypads or new wiring to each control position, which is what made a full Crestron system possible in rooms that could not be physically altered.
The design centred on the Crestron TPS-6X wireless touchpanel, which uses RF rather than WiFi for instant response and freedom from interference by neighbouring wireless networks. Each panel carries the Claridge’s crest in a bespoke finish, and guests reach the Loewe LED TVs, Blu-ray, Sky HD and hotel TV from one interface that had to be intuitive for guests of any nationality with no instruction. Read the full case study →
Most Innovative Control — The First Crestron Digital Media Installation in the UK, Baker Street
This modern townhouse near Regent’s Park was the first Crestron Digital Media installation in the UK, and won the pan-European 2010 Crestron Integration Award for Most Innovative Control Solution. It also became an official Crestron case study. HD audio and video from Sky HD, ArabSat, Apple TV and a Kaleidescape server reach eight TVs over Cat5e cable, with an audio matrix feeding ceiling speakers in each room, including DAB radio.
Centralising the sources means one Sky HD, ArabSat, Apple TV and Kaleidescape installation serves the whole house rather than a box beside every television. The Kaleidescape server holds the client’s film collection for instant access in any room, and the CCTV cameras appear as just another source on any screen. The interface was programmed from scratch around the property and the people living in it, with weather feeds and local times for each of the client’s international home locations embedded on the touchpanel home page.
Lighting, heating, Hitachi air conditioning and an Axis IP CCTV system run from the same Crestron interface, on a mix of wired TPS-6L and wireless TPS-6X touchpanels, with iPhone control from anywhere in the world, including switching on the underfloor heating during the transfer from the airport. The Axis cameras are viewable from the client’s laptop or full-screen on a touchpanel at home, with a large storage server keeping all footage available for analysis. The interface is so intuitive that the client turned down training, and it is used regularly by non-English-speaking staff. Read the full case study →
Best High Rise in Europe — Beetham Tower Penthouse, Manchester
The top two floors of the 168.87m Beetham Tower, the highest residential living space in Europe at the time of installation, won us the 2009 Crestron Integration Award for Best High Rise in Europe and became an official Crestron Digital Media case study. The biggest challenge was not distributing audio and video but controlling the building management systems: underfloor heating, ventilation, swimming pool temperature and the irrigation for a 4,000 square foot rooftop olive grove, all from Crestron 6-inch touchpanels.
Bringing these systems under one controller means the client never deals with a separate thermostat, pool controller or irrigation timer. Temperature setpoints are adjusted room by room with a simple scroll and tap on the touchpanels, and the heating, ventilation, pool and garden sit in the same interface as the audio, video, lighting and security, so the whole penthouse is run the same way.
Alongside the environment sit eight audio zones and four video zones with a Kaleidescape server that stores the client’s DVD and CD collection so several different films or albums can play at once in different zones, and an FM tuner that is particularly popular in the his-and-hers bathrooms. More than 60 lighting channels and 25 keypads give direct scene recall around the apartment, and CCTV, including the private lift lobby, records on a rolling basis alongside a monitored alarm that notifies the concierge and the client, all in one interface. Read the full case study →
Alongside the awards, we are a Crestron Dealer of Distinction, Crestron’s higher dealer level, and we have been certified Crestron dealers since 1998, the year Crestron was establishing itself as the dominant residential automation platform in the UK. For over two decades we have remained continuously active in the Crestron ecosystem, installing hundreds of systems across every generation of Crestron hardware and software.
Crestron AV FAQs
- What is Crestron NVX?
Crestron NVX is an AV-over-IP system that encodes video at its source and distributes it across a standard IP network to any number of displays simultaneously, in full 4K HDR, using the same network infrastructure as the property’s data network.
- What is Crestron NAX?
Crestron NAX is the audio equivalent of NVX: amplifiers positioned close to their speakers rather than centralised in a rack, each independently addressable over the network and capable of streaming its own source directly.
- Do I need a special network for Crestron NVX and NAX?
Yes. NVX and NAX rely on a properly specified network with sufficient bandwidth and correctly configured switching. This is designed as part of the system, not an afterthought.
- Can Crestron NVX and NAX scale to a large estate or multiple buildings?
Yes. Because both systems run over standard network infrastructure, a single source rack can serve every building on an estate over fibre, with no need to duplicate equipment in each location. Our Dubai estate runs 72 audio zones and 32 video zones from eight centralised processors.
- Can Sonos or Bluesound sit alongside NAX?
Yes. Sonos and Bluesound zones sit alongside NAX zones in the same Crestron interface, so clients can use whichever platform they prefer from a single consistent control point.
- Does Crestron work with Kaleidescape?
Yes. Crestron integrates natively with Kaleidescape. The movie list appears on the Crestron touchpanel, and selecting a film triggers the full cinema scene, with the projector on, screen deployed, processor on the correct input, lighting dimmed and blinds closed.
- Is the AV system built before it reaches site?
Yes. Every Crestron AV rack we build is pre-built and pre-programmed at our workshop. Sources are connected, routing is tested and streaming services are configured before the rack leaves our facility, so on-site commissioning does not involve building a system from components.
Crestron Home Automation → · Whole-Home Audio & Video → · Kaleidescape Movie Servers → · Home Cinema Installation → · Contact Us →
