Sherbourn PT-7030 Preamp and Multichannel Amplifiers Video

Sherbourn, to the uninitiated, may sound like the name of a high end hotel chain, but in reality it's a company continuing to bring high end audio to home theater and custom installation. This all becomes clear when you realize the company includes a 10-year warranty on all its products. To do that you have to either be crazy - or have a tremendous amount of faith in the quality of your products. Sherbourn Technology, a company that has been around for a long time, claims the latter. When we came to the booth we wanted to know what was new. The trouble was, everything is new. We took our cheat sheet and attempted to give you a tour of the booth.

The PT-7030 Home Theater Preamp/PreProcessor has Genesis Torino video engine and has 6 HDMI inputs and two outputs, IR ports, ample 12VDC triggers, and balanced outputs. Why balanced? That's where the PA-7/350, a 7-channel x 350W amplifier that can do 350W per channel, all channels driven into 8-ohms. The PA-7/150 is for lighter fair and will even do 220W per channel into 4-ohms. Finally, the PA-5/200 will provide 5 x 200W into 8-ohms or a whopping 300W per channel into 4-ohms. And the cost? The PT-7030 retails for $3000, the PA-7/350 runs $4800, the PA-7/150 is $2400, and the 5-channel PA-5/200 is $2039.

But wait... there's more...

Two channel amplifiers weren't left out. The PA-2/50 is a 50W per channel stereo amp that can automatically detect inputs and switch to it when needed. It's a $400 product that is extremely handy for Zone amplification or any of a myriad of uses. On the other side of things, if you want to bring audio to an entire home or commercial installation, Sherbourn showed off the PA-18/45 18-channel amp that has twin stereo input buses that can be assigned to any of the channels, or each channel can receive its own independent input. This amp runs just $1559 retail. If that's more than you will ever need for your installation, then the PA-12/45 provides 12 channels if amplification.

If you want a 4-Zone 2-channel amplifier to simplify running the Zones in a more traditional whole home installation, the 4Z-75 will do the trick, with automatic load balancing and the ability to switch on and off zones using triggers or even the front-mounted buttons. It's a real workhorse product that we think is going to be extremely popular with custom installers.

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Unless otherwise indicated, this is a preview article for the featured product. A formal review may or may not follow in the future.