The name alone makes it sound like some sophisticated space station device. The Sherwood Newcastle R-972 with Trinnov Optimizer: it doesn’t optimize anything up in the stars, though, unless those are Hollywood stars you’re stalking about.

The R-972 is the new flagship sophisticated A/V receiver from Sherwood Newcastle. The Trinnov Optimizer is a $13K room correction system used in professional studio mixing rooms, and the R-972 is the first receiver to incorporate its technology.

Aside from the room correction, the R-972 delivers 100 watts per channel to 7 channels, four HDMI 1.3 inputs, 1080p video scaling using Silicon Optix Reon processing, 36-bit “Deep Color,” and 32-bit DSP chips for the latest lossless audio decoding.

There’s also multiroom A/V with the R-972, as it supports three zones with independent preamp level audio and video for Zone 2 and audio only in Zone 3. And you get a remote that includes IR and RF.

More than your everyday equalizer, the Trinnov Optimizer technology incorporated into the R-972 brings the ability to adjust level, phase and time so you can really tweak your system’s soundfield. Using a four-microphone acoustic probe, the Optimizer’s system measurements help you re-position the acoustics of each channel so they’re exactly where the original recording placed them—so you get important center-channel dialogue imaged from the center of your screen, for example, even if the speaker is below it.

Hey, if it’s good enough for 20th Century Fox’s engineers, should be plenty for your theater room. Look for this bear of an A/V receiver from Sherwood Newcastle this fall, with an MSRP of $1,799.

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.