If your audio interests range in style from Blu-ray to Bluetooth, the new A/V receiver from Sherwood has you covered throughout the spectrum.

The company’s RD-7503 A/V receiver will handle lossless audio decoding from Blu-ray sources so your movie and music soundtracks rock in Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio, with full effect of the 7.1, 100-watts per channel system.

On the other hand, if you want to hear those MP3 tunes you just downloaded to your Bluetooth-enabled cell phone, just plug in the optional BT-R7 Bluetooth receiver into the front panel and you’re good to go.

Then, there’s always legacy sources like the tried-and-true CD player that you can connect for even more audio options. The RD-7503 employs 24 bit/192 KHz D/A converters, and all PCM signals are upsampled to 24 bit/96KHz, Sherwood says.

You’ll really be able to adjust and tweak your receiver to take full advantage of that sweet speaker system of yours too. The RD-7503 comes witha calibration microphone and automated setup procedure for you to try out the advanced room tuning and equalization through Sherwood’s SNAP (Sherwood Newcastle Automatic Parametric) 12-band room EQ. There’s also a 5-band user adjustable parametric EQ if you want to get extra tweaky. 

More specs include:

• Two component video inputs
• A component video output
• Audio inputs of three coaxial digital, two Toslink, and eight analog
• A/V Synch Delay for each input
• For pure two-channel stereo listening, “Tone Direct” bypasses all signal processing and tone controls
• A Cinema EQ setting is available, as well as eight DSP surround modes
• Multi-stage Dynamic Range control for nighttime listening and playback at low volume levels.

The RD-7503 also carries another solid spec, its SRP of $439.

Arlen Schweiger - Editor of Electronic House Magazine

Arlen writes about home technology installations and product news and reviews for electronichouse.com and Electronic House magazine.