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First off, welcome and I hope you enjoy this hobby moving forward.
This is $120 unit on amazon. I will admit, I am unfamiliar with this level of equipment and I would try and listen to as many items as you can on budget and see what you like. That being said, I hear good things about Sherwood.
There are a few schools among audiophiles and one is the tuning/modifiers. People people who buy equipment, take it apart and do all sorts of stuff to it. Sherwood is popular in that crowd. My hunch is for a few reasons, one undoubtedly is that it is inexpensive relatively speaking and if you mess it up, you aren't out huge amounts of money. Additionally though, the underlying circuitry is evidently pretty good. Several folks make big claims about what can be done with sherwood equipment inexpensively and simply to make is sound extraordinary. These are claims by others, not by me and I have personally done nothing to prove or disprove those claims.
I personally don't dabble much in equipment modification but find the concept interesting. I did build my own speakers and they exceeded expectation in sound quality. If you are interested in learning more about that, I can point you in the right direction.
Unfortunately, that is a much of an endorsement as I can provide. Others may also have a POV.
Sherwood gear is excellent equipment. You're making the mistake of assuming that if the audiophile press doesn't recognise a brand as "high end" it must not be very good. They're idiots,they don't know what they're talking about, and they don't know anything at all. They just imagine what they hear and make stuff up.I had a Sherwood receiver twenty years ago, and it's sound quality was the equal of any "high end" separate component on the market.Even the audiophile mags(the ones who were honest enough to tell the truth), said so.
The Onkyo A9010 gets good reviews from a remarkable range of reviewers - from Gramophone (serious classical fare) to What HiFi. Unfortunately it's a bout a hundred bucks more, but it may be worth saving for.