I never went to Anthem, but there was a similar experience when I changed AVRs. There seems to be a correlation between upgrades to simpler platforms and user satisfaction. I dont know if its as much about the hardware anymore as it is about the software behind the scenes in modern dsp centric products. It would be interesting to get together as a group and take an out of the box product and tweak the settings to attain better performance. The simpler, less featured products may be inherently "better" because they dont trip over themselves with buggy yet functional code (from multiple vendors) or the end user implementation of their complicated product.
Anyway, its great to hear about your success with the upgrade.
