You may have read my rave review on the Sherwood Pre/Power combination and figured that the features were great but the price ($5790) too high, well the R-965 is essentially the same pre-amp stage with a built in power amp section. At $2990 this A/V Receiver is about as good as it gets for the money -  check out the features here http://www.sherwoodusa.com/prod_r965.html  Australian warranty is 3 years.

You'll notice it has 3 component inputs which are relay switched, that means no degradation of signal unlike most other receivers in that price range which use electronic switching and have band width issues.

 You will also see it has a bloody great toroidal transformer so power output figures are realistic rather than the optimistic ones most companies tend to sprout. They figure 120 Watts X 7 Channels, compared to other brands I'd consider this conservative. When you look at some of the competition such as the Yamaha RX-V2400 or Marantz SR-7400 weighing in at around 17 kgs and the Sherwood at 27 kgs you have to figure the power supply in the Sherwood is fairly substantial.

It has the usual multi room / multi source capabilities with the addition of a digital source out to zone 2 plus a dedicated remote to control things there.

All these spec's are fine but how does the unit sound? The purists are going to hate me for this but in an A/B comparison using a Marantz DV-8400 front end and Paradigm Studio 100 Speakers, we couldn't hear any significant difference between the Marantz SR-8300 Receiver ($3990) and the Sherwood ($2990) on any of our test music (we use the Jamo test disc which has a mixture of superbly recorded music from delicate classical to gut wrenching rock), we thought we could hear a slight difference in favour of the Marantz when using two channel SACD although it was bloody close and we favoured the Sherwood on straight stereo CD's - probably a function of the Sherwood's 192 kHz / 24 bit Remastering Circuitry. Compared to the Yamaha RX-V2400 it was a no brainer - the Sherwood was smoother and more controlled, we're not talking great differences here, just subtleties so owners of the Yammy  shouldn't rush out to change just yet.

For surround sound and movies, we found the Sherwood to be capable of bringing out the best in just about every movie we played - except of course for the first scene in Terminator 3 with the atomic explosion - only the Sherwood Pre/Power, Marantz SR-9300 or Yamaha Z9 does justice to that without destroying speakers.

Don't be put off by the lack of brand recognition regarding Sherwood, their Newcastle range is a truly superb piece of design and engineering. At $2990 the R965 is fighting well above it's weight and in terms of it's competition should really be priced at $3990. You really need to audition one of these beauties if you're in the market for a mid to high end A/V receiver.