Just jumping in here after being away a few days. I have had a number of receivers over the years in the $800 - $1200 price range, but when I jumped to the Anthem MRX-1120 I was blown away! I was a big fan of Audyssey XT32 to help fix minor things AFTER doing acoustical room treatments of course (no amount of digital trickery can fix all of a room's problems). I had really dialed in my system, and then when I made the jump to Atmos with the Anthem MRX-1120, it sounded 100x better (ok, maybe 10x better, but a LOT better) right out of the box. The power and sound was so clean thanks to what I call "real" power output from a quality power amplifier inside the receiver. Then I ran ARC and WOWZA. As other say, it is right up there neck-in-neck with the likes of DIRAC and is always listed as the top 1 or 2 room correction system in the upper class of systems.

As mentioned, other receivers really fake their wattage numbers a lot. Anthem is known for being very accurate with it. That is why when people read that the MRX-1120 "only" has 60 watts for the overhead channels, the uneducated say that it is "too weak." Little do they know that their receivers are 'cooking the books' so to speak on how much clean power they supply, and when taking into account that most of the inflated receiver numbers put them fairly weak as well, and also keep in mind that to start hearing a difference in output capacity means at least doubling the wattage. So to get a +3dB increase is max output, you need to jump to 120 (real) watts.

Trust me, the 60 watt output going to each of my overhead M3s is a LOT of power. My room is about 14 feet wide x 24 feet long x almost 8 feet tall.

Side note. The price of the MRX-1120 is pretty steep. I got mine from an installer for a REALLY good price, but he has since gotten into a little bit of hot water for under-cutting other dealers and selling almost at his cost (in Canadian dollars) to people in the U.S. So not only did I get "almost" dealer pricing, but I bought back when they first came out and the US dollar was really strong vs the Canadian dollar, so it ended up being almost 40% off regular price, brand new, shipped to my door with full warranty. Made it a lot easier to swallow the cost, especially when it was one of the only "all in one box" receivers that could do 7.1.4 without extra amplifiers at the time.


Farewell - June 4, 2020