Sounds to make the floor shake

LOCALLY MADE and good value for money, the Sherman AV-Q5BT audio/video receiver has a USB port at its front for plugging in a flash drive to play music as well as a built-in Bluetooth for you to stream music from your smartphone or tablet computer to play on the home theatre/audio system.
Unlike other brands, Sherman AV-Q5BT provides a six-channel amplifier, meaning that in addition to the two front channels of speakers, two surround speakers at the back and the centre speaker at the front, AV-Q5BT also has a power output to drive a passive subwoofer.
Most other brands provide the 5.1-channel system, meaning they have only audio output to an active subwoofer but the AV-Q5BT has power output to both the subwoofer and subwoofer audio output.
The AV-Q5BT has a total output power of 375 watts – 100 watts for each front channel, 25 watts for each surround speaker, 25 watt for centre channel and 100 watts for subwoofer.
It comes with two analog (AUX) inputs, two HDMI inputs, a coaxial digital audio input, an optical digital audio input and an HDMI output for connection to the TV.
The package has a remote control with a lot of buttons for you to easily adjust levels of sounds for separate channels. For instance, you can increase the level of centre channel to hear the dialogue more clearly or decrease the level of the subwoofer channel if you think the boom is trembling too much.
The remote also allows you to adjust treble and bass levels by up to +14 and -14 levels to suit your music taste.
Radio reception is excellent too thanks to separate FM and AM tuners that together tune into 80 stations.
And karaoke fans can sing their hearts out via the two microphone inputs that come with functions to adjust the sound.
The receiver has 8 DSP (digital sound processing) modes for selecting when the amp is used to play music though after testing the AVR, I would suggest turning off the DSP. I found distorted the sound too much.
The AV-Q5BT’s USB music playing function supports MP3 and WMA file format. During the test, I found that it played MP3 files on my USB drive with good quality.
I tested streaming music from my smartphone to the receiver and the music was loud, clear and sharp.
During the test, I used a pair of PSB speakers for front panels, a pair of Wharfedale speakers for the surround speakers and the JBL centre speaker and JBL active subwoofer. The music sounded good.
To test the quality of the HD movie sounds, I connected the receiver to the Sherman DV-282 Blu-ray player. I tried playing Blu-ray discs in both DTS-HD MasterAudio and the receiver generated enveloping sound effects with floor-shaking booms, especially in the battle scenes from the “Terminator Salvation” movie. For Blu-ray discs that use Dolby TrueHD format, the sound will downgrade to Dolby Digital.
Sherman audio and video products are made by Thai firm Nicon Thai Sales & Service. The Sherman AV-Q5BT has a suggested retail price of Bt11,900.

Key Specs
- Front channel output power: 100 + 100W
- Centre channel output power: 25W
- Surround channel output power: |25 + 25W
- Subwoofer channel output power: 100W
- Frequency response: 20Hz-20KHz
- Speaker impedance: 4-8 ohms
- Signal to noise ratio: More than 80dB
- Ports: 2 AUX/VCR iputs, 1 coaxial digital audio input, 1 optical digital audio input, 2 HDMI inputs, 1 HDMI output, 1 subwoofer output, 1 USB, 2 microphone inputs
- Wireless music: Bluetooth
- Tuner: 40 FM stations, 40 AM stations
- Dimensions: 43.5(W) x 48.5(L) x 20.5(H)
- Weight: 11 kgs