Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater New Anthem Receivers/Processors

Has anyone gotten there hands on any of the new Anthem gear? MRX 540/740/1140, or AVM 70?

The 70 and 90 look interesting but I also like to know more ...
Especially like to know what’s in the 90 which makes it worth 2x the 70

4 independent subwoofer controls instead of 2 and ultra high quality DACs that are 16 times the cost of the DACs in the 70.

The component may be good but the proof is in the execution. At 2x the 70 I’d like to see some independently verified numbers

Here is the 60 if any use. I would suspect the 70 is 10 better.

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/anthem-avm60-review-av-processor.20155/

After reading a lot of reviews on that site I have to remind myself anything measuring better than 90db or so is likely inaudible. They fail a lot of products based on theoretical gains that likely arent perceptible in everyday use.... But their process and data is incredibly valuable and is indeed influencing manufacturers to do better already -Denon comes to mind as one manufacturer who actually engaged in the process after manufacturing faults were caught by Amir.

My Nad 777 measured just so so. In practice it is a champion of setup customization.

I havent used Arc, but I would recommend Nad based on their use of Dirac. The 778 would be one to look at if so. M17 if you dont want amps.

In a prepro you need to keep the noise floor exceptionally low as the amp will raise it by its Gain (think the ADAs have a 29x voltage gain which weirdly enough is the same number in db ...29db).

But you are right there are limits to numbers. In this case I’m looking to justify the extra $3500 for the 90 over the 70 ... and don’t have enough info other then what mojo mentioned to support it (4 subs and “it’s better”). I doubt I’m going to find enough real world value once the numbers are in.

BTW, thanks for the link... I read it a while back but would have been interested if I hadn’t (been following ASR for a while now). Amir is pretty hard on the ratings ... you have to read the review and evaluate the numbers your self ... although I think he’s softened up a bit lately.

Emotive also fixed a few RMC-1 issues pointed out by them... unfortunately I’m still on the side lines with both the company and the processor. I trust Anthem a lot more but the channel expansion promise of the RMC-1 keeps it on the list.

The 8805 also didn’t fair well. In practice it’s very passable for what it offers. Its hard to keep the noise floor down when so much sensitive analog electronics are mixed in a box stuffed with noisy digital and video circuits. A lot of the 8805 dissing was for things above the 20k hearing threshold. Although I think Marantz could have done a better job the wack down was pretty hard. On the other hand I’m not sure how inaudible noise effects the rest of the system as the amp will amplify it and the speaker will have to deal with it.

A properly designed speaker will be 100dB down all the way out there. Speakers that are linear to 100KHz would be broiling their tweeters with noise.

Aside from laying boards out correctly, using the right parts and properly planning power, signals, commons and ground, each board inside a unit like that has to be enclosed in metal boxes that don't leak EM energy. It becomes impractical and uneconomical in the consumer market.

Not sure where “there” is ... but the big thing throwing off the the SINAD (S/N+distortion) measurement was a spike around 35k. Just took a look at the review ... it read better than I remember ... wonder if he went back and softened it up a bit ... pretty sure it had a headless pink panther at one point ... the picture now is with a smiling head.

It did