Amplifier Reviews

This item is good I recommed getting it

As a basic A/V receiver, you will not find a better value. With 105 watts x 5 channels, Dolby Digital decoding, 6 channel inputs, 4 digital audio inputs, pre-amp outputs, and 5-way binding posts, the Sherwood has features that let you enjoy music and home theater now and well into the future. It is more than capable of doing anything from providing natual, clean stereo music to decoding the digital surround sound from DVD/satellite dish/digital cable to handling 6 decoded channels from a surround format yet to be developed. Amazon rightly lists the lack of S-video switching as a disappointment, but creative wiring can easily work around it. In short, if you want to spend $1000 for a A/V reciever, there are many better options available. But for less than $300, one would be lucky to find a reciever with even one of the Sherwood's many high-end features that sounds even remotely as good as this receiver does.

I bought this unit as a replacement for an ageing JVC reciever,and was impressed by the range of audio and video inputs available (including digital optical input),and the outright power of the unit, which is capable of delivering cinema realism from a wide variety of sources. As a pure stereo amp, It's as clean as anything I've listened to and has a direct audio facility which negates all processing artifact to deliver a pure, unadulterated sound from the amplifier.Surround setup is a breeze, and the unit does not require a pilot's licence to operate.

I found the sound quality, especially considering the price, to be better than expected. The remote control, however, sends signals to the wrong pieces of equipment. This is a real problem when you want to adjust the settings (such as rear channel volume) and can't manage to get into the receiver via said remote. If your willing to chance exploring the remote's labrynth, go for it. (It was not the batteries, by the way)

I ordered this phone on Jan 15, 2004. Today is Feb 9, 2004 and I have not received it to date. I've tried contacting the seller, but the emails are bounced back and it states the email address is not valid. Everyone, I urge you NOT to purchase from this seller.

I found the Soundstation product I use in the office to be so good that I decided to get this product for my home office.

I purchased the 2 line version of this phone. I had two problems immediately. The light on the mute button stopped working. Also, there was this annoying intermitant hum on the line (which all others on the call could hear as well). I called their customer service and they were very helpful. They apologized for the problem. They told me that the hum was a design flaw and that new models shouldn't experience the problem. I asked them to send me a new version of the phone so that I wouldn't have this problem going forward. They gave me a return materials number.

I received a replacement phone in the mail within a week and found that phone to have the same problem with a hum. I am very disappointed that they don't stand behind their product. If there is a design flaw then they should replace the product or refund the purchase price.

Full duplex speakerphone sound has to be experienced to be believed. Headset lets you dig through files with both hands or keyboard without hindrance. Caller ID and call-waiting caller ID gives you a full time paid for receptionist. Call logs and auto dial from call logs makes it easy to get back, even to people who don't leave voicemail messages (or forget to leave their phone numbers). Second microphone on back of unit for conference calling is also impressive.... mine worked fantastically right out of the box and has continued to do so for the past 18 months. Great company with great design - check their website for occasional product rebat offers. I got [some money] off on my phone.

Of all the network equipment I've added to my home, this has been the easiest to install. You take your existing Wireless router, unscrew the antennas, connect them to the booster, and then connect the booster to the router where your antennae used to be.

Before buying this I was having problems with signal strength. Sometimes I'd have dropouts despite there not being a great deal of interference or distance between my router and my machines.

I have to give Linksys credit: this booster *did* improve the quality of my network signal. Just not by much. I tried other positions and moving the antenna, but there really wasn't anything to write home about in the upgrade.

If this booster were about half as expensive as it's listed here (currently $81), I'd say it's almost worth the money. However, unless you're really having a lot of trouble with your network, you do a lot of file transfers from one machine to another, or you simply insist on tweaking things, you might want to pass on this product and consider waiting for a better wireless standard to upgrade to, like 802.11g.

The reality of WiFi is that just about everyone I know is not getting as solid a signal as they'd like. I've been frustrated by dead spots in the house, and I'm sure we've all done strange "rain dances" with our notebooks, cables, antennas, etc. to try to improve the signal.

However, my WiFi network did not seem as zippy as my Ethernet when using our cable modem, even though the bandwidth of both networks dwarfs the cable modem. Well, instantly after installing the booster, I got noticeably better response in a room where the signal used to be so weak that Linksys' own utility would show no signal strength (even though I could surf from there).

The WSB24 is trivial to install (180 seconds and that was because I didn't know you had to push the cable onto the connector pretty firmly). If you were a LinkSys pioneer and bought the early access points, you owe it to yourself to upgrade with this booster.

I have had both an A&B based wireless network in my new home only to find the both of them have about 15' range indoors due to the solid nature of the walls. Wireless routers work excellent in wooden modern homes, but in the stone walled home that I am in now, the wireless transmitter worked only in the living room which is obviously a waste of money seeing as how there are 3 computers upstairs. For a time I went back to my trusty 10/100 ethernet setup, but when I found that Linksys offered a signal booster I jumped on it.

I am in fact a big "Neo Geek" but I'll give you all the short version of my review. Installation was simple, (5 minutes) and it boosts the signal quite a bit just as advertised. If you suffer from low signal strength this item WILL help. If you have no signal strength this item WILL MOST LIKELY help by providing a usable connection.

I highly recomend it.

After many years of owning H/K equipment, including a Citation 16 that is still in service, I thought the AVR 65 was going to be the perfect A/V receiver for my surround system. Within three hours of hooking it up I experienced hum, noise, and an intermitent problem with the optical input. The end result was the AVR65 being replaced with the less expensive, yet equally capable, Onkyo TX-DS575. Both have discrete stages and HCC. If you are looking for an low/mid range A/V receiver, the Onkyo is the way to go. Both the H/K and the Onkyo have a similar limtation in the number and type of video inputs. I did not find this annoying on either one as the best picture will be possible with a direct link to the monitor.

ITS A GREAT REC> BUT !!!!!!! THE NEXT ONE I BUY WILL BE A DENNON BY FAR BETTER SOUND !!!!!! I never knew how much of a diff. in sound a rec. can produce til i listened to a pair of klipsh first with the arv65 HK then same speakers but with a dennon avr GOD NOW I KNOW !!!! THE dennon blew the doors off HK65 totaly made same set of speakers sound so dam diff at same volume !!!!! try it next time your in tweeters you will hear a big diff.

This is an excellent A/V receiver, DD, and DTS sound awesome. I do realize that some people are having problems with humming or hissing, or RF Interference. Well there's a solution when the first batch of the 65's came out they had problems. Units made after January '99, and after the 10,000 serial number range were supposedly fine. My unit was purchased in August '99 for $ the production date is March '99 the serial number 11,073. Disregard the people who had problems with these as they probably purchased this unit when it first came out. This is an excellent receiver, and should sound superb when I hook it up to my Nakamichi PA-1 amplifier. Saving Private Ryan in DTS on this unit sounds amazing. A must have, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND IT!

An absolute out-of-date dog. As a JVC fan I bought one of these for a "great price." After cutting a hole in my entertainment center, and spending 11 hours trying to hook my DVD player up (2 trips to the stores and tech support calls to JVC and Magnavox), I still didn't have a functioning sound system. The DVD input on the RX-558 is 6-channel RCA ONLY...S-video, optical, or coaxial need not apply. So unless you are sure your DVD output matches up (a salesman even assured me it would work with my DVD player)-- AVOID this DTSless mess of a receiver.

I got this reciever and a set of Cambridge SoundWorks Speakers for a little hometheater set up in my bedroom, nothing too fancy. Sure it isn't Dolby Digital, but it has great sound. If I ever need Dolby Digital I can alway by a DVD player with a built in decoder.

Great Buy.

ok i bought this product 2 days ago...and im already have a ton of problems with it, it hit really good for the 1st day, im running a 15 inch Crunch power sub and this amp...and now it will run for about 15 seconds then go into Off Set mode, and the only way to get it off is to turn ur reciever off or ur car, no way to stop it from going into off set mode either, its a piece

For a beginner like myself this amp was a godsend. I was considering paying the extra money to have a store wire it, But I found a good deal on this amp and a set of xplod 10's, and decided to Go it alone, so as to put that money into the car rather than installation. And it was a really good choice.

With the xplod 10's this kicks butt. Look for a dented rusty ghetto minivan in my area... It has good sound, even if its ugly. I would reccomend this to anyone with a desire for more music, but a medium range budget.

I bought this recently after the release of Garage Band for OS X. I'm going to share some information that is negative but I am overall happy with the features of this product, with the OS X support, and would recommend it for purchase. The features that I was looking were analog instrument input and the XLR microphone input, along with the best price I could find. I might get into home recording, but I didn't want to spend a ton of money until I was sure I would stick with it.

First off the information in the M-Audio web site lists that the box is able to sample up to 24bit/96kHz. It isn't a big deal to me yet, but I haven't figured out how to change the sample rate. This may be a function of the application but I can't figure out how to change it.

The second issue I had was with drivers. When I got the unit I downloaded the latest drivers 1.5.8 off their website that were supposed to be for use with OS X 10.3 (Panther). I was never able to get anything but squealing out of my machine with those drivers -but the 1.5.8 drivers worked fine on my PowerBook. Out of desparation I installed the drivers 1.5.1 off the CD that came with the MobilePre and the squealing went away. While I am happy that I can record on my desktop I wonder why I have to back down on the driver version.

The third thing is that there is sometimes some sort of latency issue with the unit. Sometimes as I play and switch settings in Garage Band, there will start to be some lag before what I play comes out of the computer. It makes it pretty impossible to play. Strangely when you open up System Preferences and change the "Latency" setting the lag goes away. It doesn't really matter what you change the latency to, it goes away just with changing.

I have not used the unit for USB audio output so I can't comment on that feature. Using the headphones in the MobilePre's monitor port would be useful if you were using the USB audio output, but for recording I find that listening to my unprocessed guitar signal is not all that useful.