Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners Upgraditis could use some help....ok alot of help

Im thinking this is case with myself as well Matt, however I'm limited to about $1500-$1600 CAD.

The Nad has no DTS wifi or Blu tooth tech and requires a significant amount of cash to splurge on the upgrade and pre amp requirement for more channels as well.

I would love to own an Anthem but an entry level 520 is severly lacking in codecs and power for the cost. The 720 is a dream, however thats a dream i cant currently afford.

I have been leaning heavily towards the Onkyo TX-RZ920.

Iam open to suggestion, i will mention im not a fan of Denon.

I'm in the same boat as you, Michael. I don't need a pre/pro right now but if my Onk dies, I'm not sure what I'll go to.

Hey Matt,

Do you (or anyone for that matter) have any listening experience with the Mrx720? I have been offered quite a nice deal from a local dealer.

Im not sure if it would be better to take the hit and go with the Nad or this one. Ive decided to increase the budget a little more than expected. Its around the 2k mark.

Thanks

Michael

I have an MRX720 it's great. 7.1 or 5.1.2 out of the box {dual sub}.
If you can get a deal highly recommend. Even before I ran ARC sounded really good.

Originally I mentioned the NAD 757 as it has similar specs. to the 720. With 7.2 channels out of the box and ability to add external power if you so wish to go full ATMOS 7.2.4 later.

Here in Vancouver the NAD is 1499 while the Anthem is 2499. Not sure of your location though I would expect similar as they tend to keep it somewhat universal per country.
Unless of course you land a deal
Also here in Vancouver NAD is much easier to find than Anthem.

The NAD isn't as powerful, lacks wireless/internet connectivity including of course Spotify. As far as I know, for room correction, it uses Audyssey MultEQ which is utter crap. ARC is vastly superior but you will have to fiddle with it and run it on a laptop or PC. The Anthem gives you more granular control over almost everything.

Thanks guys appreciate the advice.

It does retail for the same or higher locally, I have been offered quite an honest offer so far and was told it can be sweetened upon coming to the showroom.

I also just read they will be updating ARC, to ARC genesis come spring this year which will improve on from what've read as an already incredible bit of software.

Im thinking i May have to put in a few extra hours for Anthem! Lol.

Anthem is local to me. they originated in Oakville, about 6 min away from where I lived. They are now in Mississauga I believe.

All the MRX520, 720 & 1120 plus the AVM60 are built on common core internals. if you notice, the firmware for each of them are the exact same file, so they sound produce is also pretty much the same. Where you get into detail differences. The 520 has a much cheaper power supply inside compared to the Torroidal ones inside the 1120 and AVM60. it is smaller than the 720, but also has less channels of amplification. They are all the same core board layout and fit in the exact same box except for the back plate is different.

The advantage of the Anthem is the ARC sound correction in it doesn't get in the way with it's processing of sound. It is that part that I found muddied the sound from everything else that I had tried. The circuit board layout of the anthem is sweet.

I firmly believe that you don't really need very much power to drive your speakers most of the time. If you want to get into the experience... with a Pioneer receiver as my head unit, I needed to turn the volume up to -10db to get a loudness I wanted and it sounded wrong even though I was using the pre-out and running through a 250w axiom amp to drive the speakers. The Anthem I can get the same loudness at -18db and it is clear sounding... but I actually only need to use -22db (not as loud) as the sound is clear and I was turning up the volume to try and compensate for the lack of clarity with volume.

I was not aware they originated in Oakville, that's my exact location.

I find my situation sounds quite similar to yours. Although i'm lacking a pre-out, I'm usually listening around -30db with the center at +4 because anything more causes the sound to be terribly distorted and the imaging comes across very brash. resulting in poor clarity as you mentioned.

Even with the center at +4 it doesn't sound correct, but its the only way to hear dialogue.

I'm a firm believer that power is not everything, its about the delivery and components managing the output.

With a pre-out being added to the A/V receiver, how many speakers would you really want/need to provide the extra power to ? typically is it just the L/R channels? or do a lot of Audiophiles do a L/C/R combination?

i get lost when looking at pre-outs.

Like Matt, I do like the fact that you can choose to cut ARC off at the higher frequencies.

Matt, it sounds like the Anthem has higher pre-out gain than the Pioneer. This is an important factor that is often over-looked when buying separates. The pre-out signal level has to be matched with the external amp. If the level is too high, you may saturate the amp. If the level is too low, you'll never get full power out of the amp.

Judging by the engineers working there, I do think Anthem knows what they're doing.

Michael, I think your problem is that Kenwood of yours. It's running out of steam. It will be interesting to see how things improve when your new Axiom gear shows up.