Sherwood RX5502 100 Watt RMS Dual-Zone Stereo Receiver (Black)

At less than 150 bucks, you aren't going to find a whole lot of quality receivers, but this one would be an exception. Features a "two room" system for 100watt rms/speaker. Very nice. Would have liked to have a little more features when it comes to adjusting the tone (you get a generic bass/treble adjustment, no more). However, it was very easy to set up and my BIC DV64s sound good through them. Simple controls, features sleep timer and ground wire for phono hook-ups.

This is a very well made and feature packed Receiver. After having graduated to a HD TV, I was determined that the audio should match the picture. The first attempt was an all-in-one Home Theater system with 5 speakers. That proved to be only a toy and was returned. The price on the Sherwood unit was right and, upon arrival, I unpacked a rather heavy piece of electronics. This is good. As a EE and a ham radio operator for many years, I can honestly say that there is absolutely no way anyone is going to coax 600 watts of audio out of something that weighs 4-5 lbs. The RX-5502 is rated at 100 watts and has a shipping weight of 22 lbs. It is configured to support Phono (Eeek! What's that?) Tape (Play_Record) and 3 additional line level inputs along with the AM and FM tuner. Surround sound (front_back) can be selected in any combination in two rooms. I am currently running only a set of bookshelf speakers and I am thrilled. More speakers will follow.
I reccomend the Sherwood RX-5502 and I fully expected to spend far more to obtain the versatility and sound quality I can now enjoy with this. All I need now is a second remote! Have fun and enjoy your sound.
Louis K4NYK
50 yrs & 20WPM Extra

Years ago in college I bought a Sansui stereo component system, at the time State of the Art. It had an amp, pre-amp with 4 RCA in/out ports, a digital tuner, a direct drive turntable, and a dual cassette deck player/recorder. The 100-watts per channel was clean and the RCA multiple ports allowed me over time to replace the turntable with an iPod dock and the cassette player with a carousel CD player. I added an equalizer along the way to clean up the sound to my room acoustics and make my big 12 woofer floor speakers resonate with clarity. Imagine my dismay a week before Christmas when the left channel of the Sansui amp decided to check out after so many years of faithful service. We were having a crowd over for Christmas eve dinner and my wife always likes to have Christmas music pumped through the house to enhance the atmosphere. I knew we didn't want to totally replace the system with a home theater set-up, just find a worthy successor to the amp/pre-amp with multiple in/out ports and strong clean sound reproduction. Being an Amazon Prime member brought me quickly to the website and a few minutes later I was perusing home electronics. I settled on RX5502 because it didn't cost an arm and a leg like most home theater systems, Sherwood has been around since my high school days and does one thing and does it well, and the multiple in/out RCA functionality was there. The unit was ordered within 30 minutes and arrived in 2 days; it took a half day to strip out the old components and replace them with the Sherwood. The controls are very intuitive and conveniently laid out. The sound is clean and rich and our big Samsung LCD flat screen TV is complimented nicely by the strong clean sounds from our Sherwood when watching a DVD, ROKU streaming, or satellite movie channels. Sports events are even more amazing. If you have multiple inputs and multiple speakers and need to update the heart of your system, you can't go wrong with this unit.

After my Yamaha receiver went out about a year ago, I was living without music, looking for used receivers on Craig's List and Ebay. I realized that this new one was about as cheap as a used one, and I wouldn't have to worry about it breaking a few weeks after I bought it, as I would with a used one. This sounds better than my old Yamaha and I'm back spinning my old vinyl again! This was a much better idea than buying a used one or fixing the old one (again!!)

I just purchased 3 of these on Amazon for about $160 delivered and am using them to run 11 sets of speakers, mostly in wall and in ceiling speakers. I am thrilled with the sound and the 2 extra sets of speakers these can handle. In my setup, I run Audio out on my main Yamaha 1065 to the location that all of my in home speaker cables are terminated. I run Audio In to a RCA distribution Amp that I got on Amazon for under $70 and then out to each of the 3 receivers and out to the 11 sets of speakers I have inside and outside. I also picked up a Harmony IR remote and set it up so that I can control each receiver individually or as a group from anywhere in my home.

These are certainly no frills receivers, but for sheer audio output they are more than enough to handle my mostly JBL in wall and ceiling speakers. I can turn on my Yamaha, select CD, IPOD or Windows Media Center off my Xbox, pick up the Harmony Remote, press Power and 11 sets of speakers come on with whatever my Yamaha is playing, I love it. I looked into "whole home audio systems" and all I saw was $$$ I'm in to this for about $600 (not counting speakers) and I'm thrilled with it. Drawbacks - I cannot contol each set of speakers volume individually, but I set them up in a away that they are grouped so having the same volume to each set of speakers on each receiver is almost always what you would do anyway, plus you can carry that harmony remote in your pocket and adjust at will. Playing multiple sources in multiple locations may be a drawback for some, but I pretty much want the same thing playing where ever I am anyway, plus I can select different inputs on each receiver so this is not a big deal either.

I think the sound is crisp and bright, the receivers don't seem to get too hot after a full day of piping music around my house and they have so few options that it's not like you need a degree to turn on ABCD or any combination of speakers on each receiver.

If you have a audio only need to get speakers hooked up in multiple locations this is one of the best bargains I've run across.