Back in December, I was seriously looking at the AVM 70, however, a friend of mine who works in a retail outlet that carries the Anthem line said any meaningful inventory would probably not be available until February at the earliest and if so, get on the list. Instead I got a hold of a Yamaha CX-A 5200,a little older unit, however, for a number of reasons, still my predominant choice. On the surface, the difference between the 90 and 70 is apparently, a little more upgraded DAC and the ability to connect FOUR independently controlled subwoofers rather than TWO. There could be other extra features that I am unaware of, but these are two of them and I am still not convinced that the price differential is worth it between the 90 and 70. Of course, the upgraded "Genesis" ARC room calibration software in all of their new AVR and Pre-Pros is regarded as being right up there with the best of them. Anthem did initially announce that any manual set-up would only be available in an outboard app(no on-screen programming) from which almost immediately they received a considerable amount of pushback and apparently re-introduced it back into their units. I would be curious to see if that actually happened.
In this day of home theater systems with with lots of source units, amps, video game consoles, cable/sat boxes, equipment of all sorts and lots of cable connections, one of the advantages of a Pre-Pro and separate amps is if the amp has the capability, being able to hook-up the Pre-Pro with the amps through "balanced" connections can, potentially make a big difference in the noise floor. I was having an issue with a a quiet, however, noticeable ground loop hum that I pinpointed through my cable box, the balanced connections ultimately, totally silenced. For that reason alone, personally, in future, I don't think I would ever go back to an AVR.
