Hi, just letting you know I was able to hear the 972 yesterday. I put my review up at AVS. Note that I am not an expert, just someone who loves the hobby and great sound! Here is the review:

Hi guys,
I wanted to post my impression's of the new unit. I was able to stop by the demo yesterday and meet Jeff from Sherwood. He gave me a really nice demo of the unit, on a variety of material. It was a 5.1 setup. The Front 3 were Tannoy (small speakers, with 4 inch drivers I believe). The left and right were approx 5 feet apart, and the center was approx 1 foot below. The rear speakers were in the ceiling type. The sub was a Velodyne (the sub settings on the back were bypassed and setup by Trinnov). The room was pretty big, with thin carpeting, and non treated walls. There were two door openings to the left and right of the screen, and it was pretty noisy from the people talking and moving in and out from the other room. There was a door opening in the back as well.

The Trinnov was set on the Natural curve. The first clip we watched was from Pearl Harbor. I was expecting the setup to sound decent, but be limited by the rear speakers that were pointed into the floor in back of us. From hearing in-ceiling speakers before in different setups I noticed that the sound never panned as seamless as my setup at home. The planes started to fly by, and pans from back to front were very good. I did not see any real limitation with the in ceiling speakers. They seemed to be tonally perfect to the front three. The pans from left to right were equally as good, with a sound stage that seemed much larger than the 5 foot speaker front spacing. I was very impressed with what I was hearing. He then cycled to a different input with the Trinnov not engaged (distance and levels were the only thing set). You can set each input up individually for different Trinnov settings. With Trinnov off, the pans were decent, but you definitely noticed a limitation with the rear speakers. Also, the sound stage was not as wide, and you could hear the low center channel.
We then moved on to a Dave Matthews Concert. The Trinnov was set to Natural. Again I was extremely impressed. It felt as if you were in the middle of the crowd. It sounded just like you were there. It almost felt like a DSP was active, one that did not add any fake echoes (there were none activated, I asked). I watch many concert Blu-Rays, and was very impressed (my current favorite is the Police Certifiable). He then put on another concert clip. This time he had me stand facing the right wall. He used the in-ceiling speaker as the right, and the front right speaker as the left. The speakers did throw an image that was centered between them. It was not perfect, but very good considering two different speakers, with one pointing into the floor, and one pointing to the back of the room!).

After a few other demos, he put on Transformers (Trinnov Natural). Now I am very familiar with this disc, since I use it to demo and setup my audio often. The opening sequence was very impressive, with decent bass from the Velodyne blending nicely with the small Tannoys and rear speakers. Now I run much larger speakers and sub's at home, so it's hard to compare the smaller speakers (they did not output anywhere near what my subs and mains are capable of). But, what I did find impressive was the clarity of the dialog. I moved around the room, and the voices remained very clear, and the sound effects were still good. When Trinnov was turned off, you could tell the sound was coming from the speakers, and that the voices came from the center channel below the screen. The overall sound field was reduced, it just did not seem like you were in the action.

Jeff did say that it may be possible in the future to download new target curves for the Trinnov. The one thing I did not see (and the option was grayed out, so it may be possible to enable it in the future) was on screen volume display. To me this is no big deal, I currently do not use it, but I thought It may be a limitation for some. The unit will pass the 1080P signal in bypass mode, I was happy to see that. I usually do not use any scaling in the receiver.

Overall I was very impressed, and cannot wait to see what it can do in my setup. All my speakers are elevated on the walls (the front three are above my projection screen), so it would be interesting to see the results.