AV Receiver Reviews

Not So Dirty Harry
Harry Brown stars Michael Caine as an elderly vigilante who takes on thugs infesting his public housing project. This grippingly realistic drama truly made me feel the presence of evil as it progressed from soft-voiced menace to full-on street riot. As the effects in the DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack got more aggressive, I sought out Dolby Volume, which is designed to maintain volume level across multiple sources and improve dialogue clarity and surround levels even at low volumes. The remote’s Sound Parameter button led me to the correct front-panel-only menu, and a red LED signaled that Dolby Volume was on—it was very bright, but it responded to the Dimmer button. As I’ve found so many times in the recent past, the availability of a low-volume listening mode was a lifesaver. It let me adopt a less defensive position, with less remote button punching, and get pulled into the story’s relentless vortex.

I stuck with Dolby Volume as The Crazies started unspooling its high-resolution PCM soundtrack. When a small town’s residents turn into zombies and havoc ensues, a low-volume listening mode comes in handy. Musical interludes featuring Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson provided moments of charm. These two familiar voices, as well as the dialogue, gave me a good idea of what the AVR’s digital amplification sounds like. It’s a dry and slightly grainy presentation that seems to have been optimized for low- to moderate-level listening. If you’re looking for more warmth in a comparably priced product, you’d probably prefer something else.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is the movie version of the first in a trilogy of best-selling books by Swedish author Stieg Larsson. While the movie is being remade in English, with Daniel Craig no less, I saw the Swedish version. I chose the English-dubbed soundtrack. Unfortunately, all soundtrack options were old-school Dolby Digital, and they emphasized the AVR’s lack of warmth and even went a little edgy.

Music via Disc and Network
Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 2 and Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini arrived on a PentaTone SACD, recorded in analog quad circa 1975, with pianist Werner Haas accompanied by Eliahu Inbal and the Radio Symphony Orchestra Frankfurt. As I didn’t need Dolby Volume to shield me from orchestral dynamics, I turned the low-volume mode off. Also, for the first time, I turned off Sherwood’s proprietary room EQ, with surprising results. The overall presentation immediately became less fatiguing. It still had that digital amp sound, but a more palatable version of it. Unfortunately, the other surprising result was that imaging dropped off considerably. This was quite noticeable in a fourchannel recording with no center channel.

For my first browse through the VuNow functions, I used a Wi-Fi connection, which involved plugging a supplied USB adapter into the front panel. It worked, but it was a little slow. I switched to a wired connection before I started exploring deeper. This improved some functions. Note that when you’re selecting wired versus wireless, the system accompanies the wired option with the word recommended. Each time I established a new network connection, the system slowly but surely made its existence known to my router-connected desktop PC on the adjacent wall, and I approved the R-904N for media sharing.

When you select VuNow, the first thing you see is a stack of logos: Sherwood, Powered by VuNow, and the VuNow motto: Watch the Music. While the system searches for a connection, the screen displays a blue sky with puffy clouds, evidently shot from a plane, accompanied by the opening notes of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Superimposed text first says, “Connecting to the Network,” then, “Loading Channels.” Then comes the main menu: My Collection, YouTube, Popular Websites, Video Search, Movies, Internet TV & Radio, and Settings.

I started navigating for music: My Collection, Home Network, Music, All Music. For artist-oriented searching, I had my choice of All Artists and Album Artists, which displayed the same material. I dove into my Jan Akkerman folder and looked for the Jazzah EP. It was the only missing album among several by that artist. Jazzah is also the only download I’ve ever bought from iTunes. While the manual doesn’t list AAC among the compatible audio files, my contact said the problem was with iTunes, not the file format.

Grinderman 2, Nick Cave’s latest album, was my second choice. This time, the album showed up—in duplicate, with each song title repeated. I checked the album’s folder on my PC and saw only one file for each track. I also checked to see if the folder was duplicated on my hard drive, but it was not. VuNow displayed the tracks in alphabetical order, not the artist’s chosen running order, as dictated by the track-number tag. When I returned to the PC, I saw that each track-number field was dutifully filled with a numeral. The MP3 file format supports several tagging standards. Perhaps VuNow doesn’t recognize them all. Square album art was stretched to 4:3. A screen saver of Sherwood logos floating around the screen started beyond the five-minute point.

The Grinderman 2 MP3 files at 320 kilobits per second sounded grainy and blurred, although the source material has that grungy quality regardless of the playback gear.

More Network Fun
Accessing pictures, VuNow found the Windows My Pictures folder but not my own Pictures folder. That was no big deal: Other DLNA devices I’ve used have the same flaw. VuNow stretched images that weren’t already in a 4:3 aspect ratio to fit that shape.

The YouTube experience ranged from easy to possible to impossible. It was easy to select from the Most Viewed menu. Searching wasn’t hard to figure out: The system displayed a panel with the full alphabet and numerals 0 through 9 at left, with an entry blank at the top of the screen. Content possibilities displayed in wide rectangles at right, depending on what I typed. The arrow keys and my thumb got a lot of mileage, but there was nothing intimidating about the process. The only mishap occurred when I selected Channels. I had to perform a full reboot from the opening Sherwood/VuNow/Beethoven screen.

Was it a problem with Channels or YouTube in general? When I returned to Most Viewed and Search, everything was fine. In four tries, Channels crashed VuNow every time.

I continued to explore the main menu methodically. Popular Websites displayed 36 tiles covering an array of content in two screens, many of which I’d never heard of. RoxioNow occupied two tiles, one to rent, one to buy. Incidentally, RoxioNow recently adopted the excellent Dolby Digital Plus surround codec, joining Netflix and VUDU.

As I clicked through various categories, the system displayed 10 different selections per screen. News organizations included ABC, CNN, Forbes, and Fox. Some of these offered an assortment of categories at screen left, sometimes with nested subcategories, although the ultimate destination was a set of tiles representing Web videos to select and view. Others offered the search arrangement I’d already seen with YouTube. Not surprisingly, the main menu’s Video Search also echoed the primary search interface. According to the manual, it’s designed to “search any video available on the Internet,” not just those from VuNow’s favored pay providers.