Sherwood R-972 User Thread - Page 62

This guy is on sale (Black Friday Special) right now at A4L. Includes free shipping and the wood end caps. Anyone install the end caps?

Just purchased.
I emailed A4L last week asking about Black Friday.
Mark emailed back $50 off on the New 972 package.
The sale went live this morning.

Read all 61 pages of this thread(and a few others)
Looking forward to expanding my level of patience.

Steve

I have the R-972 and the end caps installed look very nice. Do not look at the side of my equipment very much, but if you do, it is an improvement over the machine grey finish.

Here are my thoughts on the unit and Trinnov: In the correct application this is the best-sounding processor i have ever heard in both 2-channel and surround sound. Trinnov is amazing and provides a large sweet spot with pinpoint imaging with stereo and with movies the speakers just disappear in enveloping sound (whether 7.1 or 5.1) and center channel dialogue is extremely strong and clear.

I have used many high-end processors over the years: Anthem D2, Arcam AV888, Denon AVP-HD1 and truly prefer the R-972 (with an outboard amp of course - although this thing is a beast and the amps appear beefier than my Denon AVR-4311ci). I have used XT32 with the 4311. Although nice, I have always felt that Audyssey makes too many compromises in order to give good sound in numerous positions and therefore sounds vague in the sweet spot (where I sit 90% of the time and my usual movie guest are not particular enough to notice any Audyssey improvements in off-angle seats).

I have 4 HDMI sources (3D Oppo, HD DVD, XBOX 360 and FIOS DVR) and tend to listen to most sources as mixed on the disc: 2-channel, 5.1 or 7.1, My speakers are ML Vantages with 4 Vistas as surrounds and a Stage center with 2 Descent i subs. My amp is a B&K 200.7. I also watch only HD video and like it passed through untouched. The R-972 works great with my needs.

That being said, here are the limtations that might affect some:

1) The REON processor is not well implemented and appears to produce artifacts at times - I would stick to video bypass.
2) There is a few second audio mute delay as it locks on to the codec. However, once locked on it stays locked - does not lose audio again when changing tracks or chapters.
3) Trinnov take a little patience to set-up properly (although not any more than Audyssey's 6-8 positions) and you do need to experiment with the bass boost files (0db, +3 or +6) to see which works best for your room - however, they load quickly and easily - and you just load a new one if you don't like the last.
4) The remote is not good - but I use a Harmony
5) The set-up menu is simple with no fancy GUI - but well-laid out and easy to understand without the manual if you are somewhat experienced in HT.
6) No PLIIz, DSX or Neo:X, but Trinnov allows for many variations in speaker placement and sound shaping goals.

If you can live with the above, it is an absolute steal at the current price!

^^^

 

Thanks for the feedback.  Can you share the settings Trinnov came up for your speakers, in particular the crossovers?

Well, they are used, otherwise no one would have known they were defective:).I bet that's where the first one I had sent back went too.It wasn't defective though as I found out later;).I think I still have the serial number written down somewhere around here.It would be interesting to see if anyone here ended up with it lol!.

I ran it 3 times and the setting s were consistent each time. It crossed over all 7 speakers at 80hz, which, although a little high vs. the specs, sounds great. It stated my subs went down to 19hz.

19hz is the lowest it can measure.

Hope it works out well for those that have gotten the recent deals. I love mine...and also have the end caps.
Edited by cschang - 11/21/12 at 4:26pm

Is there a way to reduce speaker thumping everytime 972 is turned on or is it just part of design flaw? My speakers/subwoofers thump/pop everytime I turn the unit on. Hopefully it won't cause any damage to speakers in long run.

How loud is the thump?

Mine is barely perceptible, and it is mainly from the sub.
Edited by cschang - 11/22/12 at 8:54am

Anyone know if the 3 year warranty is transferrable? I am thinking about picking up one of these from A4L, but there's a possibility I might sell it in about a year, and it would be nice to sell it with the remainder of the warranty.

Also, is the manual available online? I could not find it at Sherwood's site or A4L. Thanks!

http://findyourmanuals.com/SHERWOOD/R-972/instructions

Windows 8 says it's virus free.

Thanks, Charles. I could no longer resist and bought one of the ebay refurbs.

Mine thumps as well but I believe it's only coming from the sub.

Worse case the scrap metal value might make it a decent investment.





http://hometheater.about.com/od/avreceiversreviews/ig/Sherwood-Newcastle-R-972-Photo/
Edited by Charles R - 11/22/12 at 12:13pm

Looks like a monster. I will likely be using external amplification, so hopefully I will not be stressing the AVR much.
Edited by amt - 11/22/12 at 4:38pm

The thumps I get are moderately loud from subs & front speakers as they are connected with preouts. Might be a problem with preouts. Would this cause damage to drivers in long run? Hopefully not.

No,the warranty is not transferable and people avoid it like the plague without one:rolleyes:!

With the Black Friday special almost over I see A4L has 183 left and only 2 of the end caps. I have wondered how many they had... still a ways to go!

Optimizer issue(s)...

After the initial sweep which results in 3 sweeps for each of the 7.1 speakers it only returns values for the Left and Right speakers. Of which appears to be invalid as well. All of the other speakers have nulls. I did a factory reset which didn't make any difference. Anyone have any suggestions... or hints as to what I'm doing wrong.

If I remember correctly, 3 sweeps is good for each channel.

How long are you waiting afterwards for the screen to update?

It displays such after the initial sweeps (before computing) and after computing/storing the results. The Left and Right speakers values are always the same and all of the other speaker values are nulls. And yes it does only 3 sweeps per speaker and doesn't report any errors. I tried unplugging for a bit as well.

Welcome to the quirky Sherwood madness:!

I never found the insides of this unit to be all that impressive personally.A lot of that empty space was were the higher quality components and added circuitry of the R-965 design(which is the basically the same chassis the R-972 uses) were removed.

I'd look into getting a replacement

Steven...so bitter. Do you have anything helpful to say in the thread? Just upset that you couldn't find happiness with the R-972 in your weird application?

You opened your unit up and then returned it?

Gentlemen:

The R-965 and R-972 were never the same design.

From memory, the only depopulated board in the R-972 was the 7 channel analog input board. The board had space for 7 channels of A to D but only the L/R main inputs had the convertors installed.

During calibration, the Trinnov module sends a signal to each channel a minimum of 3 times. It measures frequency response, power response, azimuth, elevation and distance. The R-972 uses a signal around 5 kHz to calculate azimuth and elevation. If the speaker does not have a direct path to the microphones at high frequencies or if there are ambiguous reflections from the speaker, the R-972 may not be able to accurately localize the speaker. The R-972 will try 10 times to localize each speaker. If it is not found within 10 attempts, the signal will rotate to the next channel, no data will be displayed for azimuth and elevation for that channel and remapping will not be available. If your R-972 is finding all of the speakers in fewer than 10 attempts yet does not display complete data for each channel including azimuth and elevation, it is defective and should be returned.

If the receiver does not find one or more channels in 10 attempts, I would advise you to move the microphone or change the speaker position so that the high-frequency transducer is pointing more directly at the microphone array. You may also want to see if there are any obstructions approximately 3 inches from the speaker that could cause ambiguous arrival data. On one occasion in a Delaware retail store, the relatively low-end L/R Yamaha towers could only be found when their grills were removed.

Jeff

Received my refurb from Sherwood tonight. It was well packaged and it looks brand new. I got everything connected and it took some time to get my Fios box, Panasonic Bluray player, Pioneer SACD/DVD Audio player, Computer, Dvdo Edge, Darblet and Panasonic Plasma all hooked up.

First thing I wanted to find out was how powerful it was compared to my Pioneer 59TXI and I was surprised that it held its own. I was thinking I might need an external amp but that won't be the case as the R972 puts out plenty of power for my relatively small room. It also reminded my of how clean the sound was compared to the R965 that I used to have. So far the only thing I wish Sherwood would have done was to make Trinnov work on the multi channel analog ins. My Pioneer 59AVI doesn't pass SACD or DVD Audio over HDMI nor does the Sherwood have an I-link. That being said the sound over analog with SACD and DVD Audio is very good. I will do the Trinniov process tomorrow but so far so good.

I thought I was being helpful by pointing out the realities of owning the unit.Apparently,you have a vested interest in denying that. And yes,it was weird for me to think the R-972 could sound better than my previous set-up.I had to try the Sherwood after hearing about how great it is,but for me the re-mapping was the only thing that lived up to hype.I used the unit in multiple applications.Basically I noticed more and more issues as a result.

The pictures of the inside of the unit are posted.Did you miss them?

I have a vested interest? Nice try. Find a post where I recommend the R-972 without pointing out that it has issues. The realities you speak of are your experience...which is fair....or are you calling everyone that is happy with the R-972 a liar? You didn't like the unit in your weird setup. For $400 what would you rather have in terms of sound? How about at $600?
So you looked at the pictures and came to the conclusion you posted? Is that how you analyzed it...through those pictures? The wrong conclusion that Jeff corrected.

I know this post will get an I told you so from Steven on buying a refurb but I would like relay a positive customer service experience. After getting things set up last night I heard a loud hum from my left front speaker. I eventually diagnosed that the speaker terminal itself if you moved it back and forth would make the hum come and go. I called Sherwood today and on the second ring I got a live tech who was very helpful. He thinks the board for the front speakers might have a crack in it. He sent me out a UPS label today to ship it to them on their dime. I have had a lot of poor customer services experiences lately so this actually caught me off guard. Looking forward to getting it back as the sound held up very well to my Pioneer 59TXI and I haven't touch Trinnov yet.

Steven Lansing.

We are all aware that you do not like the R-972 so maybe just move on? I am sure the recent price decreases are getting you frustrated but that is not the fault of the rest of us. Maybe you should re-think your price if it has been nearly 4 months since you listed it?

Some here are new to the R-972 and this thread is supposed to be helpful, not confrontational and bitter. It actually hurts you to bad mouth a product over and over again that you are at the same time trying to sell used. You have already pointed out your frustrations with the R-972 and anyone is free to look through the thread and read them. It's just not constructive to continually go on about it so please stop.