Is there any chance the Anthem amp has slightly higher gain than the amp in your receiver and part of the difference in sound between them is that the levels are just a bit higher going through the Anthem ?
You are probably very right with this. The anthem is a more powerful amp @ 250w but some say it's very conservative. the receiver is rated at 120w. The problem is that when I do the pioneer sound setup with the mic, the end results make the front speakers sound just as wrong as the rear speakers, rather than the other way of making the rears sound better.
I will freely admit that I don't know why I think it sounds better when I hook up the anthem. If I had a second powered amp, I could so some better testing. See if it's just me making it up in my head because I've already concluded that i should sound better so therefor I am making it.
But I don't see anyone jumping up and down when someone says that are looking to upgrade to the M80HP or the M100 speakers and saying to them, that they should check their room to sonically improve it, or they have upgraditis. All I want is to get my room sounding where I'd like it to be. and if it turns out that all I need is another acoustic panel made and put on a wall then great. But with any experiment, you don't know what will work until you try it.
As usual.. I'll just sit and ponder over this for a while and then get sidetracked into doing something else and come to accept that it sounds the way that it does until it bothers me that much that I'll make a change.
