Fred Manteghian

Murphy's got this law, see? When you only have one working prototype of your new product, but you go ahead and set yourself to be the first press event for a room full of just fed journalists who are eager to hear or see something exciting, well then, you can rest assured knowing your prototype will crap out. That's what happened at 10 AM when the ZVOX 450 ZBIT the ZDUST just before the press arrived. Someone said it was a Bill Gates moment.

When we added the addition that contains the office to our house in 1990, I had the wherewithal to run speaker wires from the built-in nook in the office to the opposite wall. The idea was to put the stereo in the alcove and not have wires showing. I knew enough to use Radio Shack’s finest 16-gauge copper. Of course, I never actually <i>used </i>the wires or the nook. There was always some interesting high-end cable being proffered, and I’m only human. Besides, the speakers and equipment were out on display in the reviewing room, not meant to be hidden in an alcove.

The Sherwood Newcastle R-972 won't be out until April '08, but I sat down for a demo of their new receiver. What sets it apart from other 4 HMDI in (1 out) AVRs is their Trinnov Optimizer. The fuzzy shot above shows green speakers along the peripheral of the coincentric circles that describe the speaker placement positions used during soundtrack mastering. The smaller red speaker positions show where people normally put them. By generating tones, I was told, the Sherwood receiver will figure out where you've placed speakers in your room, and compensate for it. I asked if you'd get that great on-screen display with the R-972's implementation, but alas, no. However, you can interface your laptop to the receiver and work with the setup that way.

What gives Lexicon?