Sherwood RV-5050R AV-receiver
The Sherwood RV-5050R model attracts by the competent arrangement of the control elements, combining thoughtful design and functional division. Controlling the device from the front panel is simple and convenient, also due to the fact that there is no abundance of additional (read: unnecessary) functions. Only the most necessary - Dolby Pro Logic and Dolby 3-Stereo. By the way, for all channels (front, center and rear) on the rear panel there are outputs from preamplifiers in case if you want to use separate power amplifiers for them. And another thing: you can connect an external "pre" to the front amplifiers.
When we saw the remote control of the receiver Sherwood RV-5050R, the number of buttons on which exceeded half a hundred, my hand reached for the instruction manual, it seemed that it can't be done without. But in a few seconds it became clear that it wasn't. Operating the remote control was quite simple due to the fact that each button has only one function. For example, you cannot scan the tuner frequencies, work with the stored stations. You can, however, decrease the brightness of the display, up to turning it off completely, which is not superfluous when watching TV in a dark room. The remote control also tunes Surround channels and controls external components - Equalizer, tape recorders and CD-player (you can even use a multidisc player). But, of course, all this must be from Sherwood.
The Sherwood RV-5050R receiver in DPL mode provides little signal penetration from one channel to another. That's probably why it has a fairly confident sound reference to the source. It is equally good at large-scale scenes and dialog, localization of small sources and extended ones. When moving the source, of course, the sound was not always tonally perfect, but it reproduced smoothly, without dips in volume. It is necessary to be careful with the installation of the speakers when increasing the distance between the front speakers (or when you are closer to them) sometimes it may seem as if the scene in front of you is sort of torn. True, this is more noticeable on the stereo signal. No big deal: experimenting with speaker placement and finding the angle of rotation of the speakers will help. In stereo mode, the achievements were more modest. The test subject was too picky about the speakers to be connected. Compared with the competitors, the Sherwood RV-5050R "wanted" to produce a balanced sound spectrum only on high-end speakers, which are able to reproduce deep bass. It is better to aim for the purchase of a subwoofer right away. The natural arrangement of symphony orchestra instruments is maintained at lower volume levels. Only sometimes it seemed that the soft sounds of the drums lose their sharp outlines and are slightly covered by the powerful forte of the whole orchestra.
The tuner had to be fiddled with until a satisfactory position of the antenna was found. Here the Sherwood RV-5050R proved to be more capricious than the rest of the test participants. The sound with FM slightly lacked upper frequencies, and the lower ones, on the contrary, seemed to be too much (what can they do with the sound on the radio?!).
