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Anthem AVM 90 Audio Video Preamp/Processor

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With the help of a couple gentlemen here on ASR, I am very interested in the Anthem AVP’s. It appears that the AVM 70 very well may be best amongst the best dedicated AVP in the A/V world, not even taking into consideration the meager price tag. I’m saying meager because I paid nearly that for my AVR years ago. But it looks like it’s about to get even better, and I see the new Anthem AVM 90 for pre-order, and this is what I could find out online about it. I can’t find much info about the DAC’s in the AVM 70, but check out the specs for the DAC’s in the AVM 90, and other features. In my opinion it’s about time that they have upped the ante, and one of these companies needs to break away from the pack.

So what does everybody think, because it’s double the price of the AVM 70, and does the ability to run 4 subwoofers interest you?

My question would be how is it going to EQ those, how effective is Genesis going to be?

“The AVM 90 is our new flagship A/V Processor with upgraded audio circuitry, 4 independent subwoofer outputs and an excellent 32-bit DAC’s with 768kHz sampling capability. It represents Anthem’s ultimate expression of audio performance.



Object-oriented audio codecs have been updated with support for up to 15.4 channels; as well as built-in streaming support for Apple AirPlay2, Google Chromecast, Bluetooth, Spotify Connect and Roon (coming soon).

Video support includes 7 HDMI 2.0 inputs with 2 outputs, plus eARC for seamless integration with smart TVs. Perfect passthrough of Ultra HD signals at up to 18.2 Gbps with Dolby Vision, HDR or Hybrid Log Gamma ensures optimal presentation of your visual media”
 
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From the Anthem website;

ANTHEM – PURE PERFORMANCE, PURE VALUE
Since the AVM 50 and Statement D2 A/V Processors, music lovers and home theater enthusiasts have coveted Anthem’s premium surround separates. Featuring industry-leading room correction, expert management of the latest audio formats and robust integration; Anthem is the ultimate nerve center of any premium home theater or media room.

The AVM 90 is our new flagship A/V Processor with upgraded audio circuitry, 4 independent subwoofer outputs and an excellent 32-bit DAC's with 768kHz sampling capability. It represents Anthem’s ultimate expression of audio performance.

Object-oriented audio codecs have been updated with support for up to 15.4 channels; as well as built-in streaming support for Apple AirPlay2, Google Chromecast, Bluetooth, Spotify Connect and Roon (coming soon).
Video support includes 7 HDMI 2.0 inputs with 2 outputs, plus eARC for seamless integration with smart TVs. Perfect passthrough of Ultra HD signals at up to 18.2 Gbps with Dolby Vision, HDR or Hybrid Log Gamma ensures optimal presentation of your visual media.
 
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Looks like this one’s been on pre-order for over a year zzzzz lol.
 

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OMG you should read the avs forum owners thread. From the beginning. Can’t believe you are now becoming an Anthem fan.
 
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OMG you should read the avs forum owners thread. From the beginning. Can’t believe you are now becoming an Anthem fan.



Hi, I guess I’m a little out of touch with this. I am not happy with the company that makes my current (Marantz) pre-pro, and the Anthem AVM 70 likely has everything I need, and a complete bargain. But the AVM 90 looked interesting, till I found out they can’t bring it to market. Getting tired of the Covid excuse for everything, but it is what it is we keep plugging.
 
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Yes over a year now! What a joke everybody blamed their problems on the pandemic!

Yeah the covid excuse is getting a bit old to say the least. I am roofing contractor, and the lead time getting most commercial roofing materials after the order is placed, is six months to a year believe it or not. I thank God that I also have a solid residential roofing part of the business.
 
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My question in all of this is… Is the AVM 90 going to be worth a double the price of the AVM 70? What does it bring to the table for another $3500?

So far I see four individual subwoofer outputs.

32/768 DAC’s that I can only hope are implemented correctly. Even if it’s not audible, I want to have a V-8 in my next preamp.

It’s also very hard to find the specs for the DAC’s in the AVM 70, does anyone know the specs for them?
 

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With declared specs of audio performance ( https://www.anthemav.com/products-current/model=avm-70/page=specs ) I suppose that 32/768 DACs might be some ES9038Q2M with price around 20 USD at Mouser in 100+ pcs batch (10 USD per channel).
I don't think that it's possible to make much better THD+N numbers in AV combo with any reasonable price.
Squeezing out few more Dbs and multiplying the cost looks like a bad idea.
 

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I was upgrading to separates as that was always the ultimate goal from my youth and from reading “stereo review” etc. In 2019, I was at first holding out for the HDMI 2.1 version of the Marantz 8805, but then I discovered ASR and unfortunately the Marantz tested poorly. Sigh, my goal was dashed. But, Aha, Anthem to the rescue with the newly announced AVM 70/90 releases. I decided the 90 would be my goal. Anthem had a loyal following from the subjective reviewers and Anthem owners. So in the meantime I waited and then later, much later in 2020 (or maybe 2021) than previously announced the 70 was released. I eagerly read the new owners’ forum on AVS; but clearly early on, Anthem seemed to have missed badly with its 70 via bugs and slow customer support. It was a disappointing, clumsy, long roll out. The 70 seems to have now stabilized but my faith in that company has been shattered.
 

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My question in all of this is… Is the AVM 90 going to be worth a double the price of the AVM 70? What does it bring to the table for another $3500?

So far I see four individual subwoofer outputs.

32/768 DAC’s that I can only hope are implemented correctly. Even if it’s not audible, I want to have a V-8 in my next preamp.

It’s also very hard to find the specs for the DAC’s in the AVM 70, does anyone know the specs for them?

I would say no because:

- Even if they are available near the end of this year, I will be disappointed that they still won't have HDMI 2.1. Apparently HDMI 2.1a that hopefully would clean up all the bugs should be out by that time. Are they going to provide a free hardware upgrade to 2.1 or 2.1a? You may not need 2.1, but for $3,500 more it would be nice to have that >2.5X transmission bit rate (a little bit of future proofing perhaps..) capability included.

- Anthem does not published as much specs as Marantz, take a look of the owner's manual, 70 pages from cover to cover and that is for all of their MRX AVRs and AVMs including the AVM90!!?? 70 pages covering 6 different products vs 199 pages for just yours/and mine AV8801. Did I miss something or they did?:D
https://manuals.anthemav.com/media/manuals/mrx-avm_en.pdf I am sure they are more skillful at writing manuals but the gap would seem too big to close.;)

- You seem impressed by the specs posted by Marantz for the AV8801 (I still don't know what kind of specs you have on it that I don't..), so I suspect you may not like the Anthem's seemingly lack of detailed specs but again that's just my opinion, please read the linked manual and see it for yourself. I would love to hear back from you on this.

- About the 4 independent subwoofer outputs feature, we know each will have its own preamp/DAC, but I am not sure if they can also EQ each subwoofer independently or just time align them like Marantz's. Not that I believe it is necessary, nor do I know it is a better way, but I would like to know one way or another.

Regardless, I am not aware of any .2 channel available for movies, or even music, let alone .4 so while I agree it is a good feature to have 4, I cannot imagine it would make any audible difference between the 0.2 that your Marantz already offer, in being able to time align two subwoofers. If you ask Audyssey, they will tell you to time align 4 subs, you can wire them in two groups and that as long as the two in each group are equidistance than it will be just as good. I am sure Audyssey would be biased in saying that but it does make some sense to me, so I will leave it to you to research on the two groups of two vs 4 independent scenarios.

In my opinion, even if they can EQ each sub channel truly independently, I am not sure if it would make any difference, let alone a "better" or "worse" difference.

As for the DAC, I remember reading it from some 3rd party sites that the AVM 70 has the AK4490 and the 90 has the AK4499. The 4499 has much higher SINAD but even at the level of the AK4490, the DAC IC would typically not be the bottleneck anyway. Again, the info is not from an Anthem source so it could just be hearsay, I suppose you can contact Anthem, or ask the question on AVS and see if some of the owners have the information directly from Anthem already.

Since I don't miss the "sound" of my AV8801 at all after replacing it with my cheap Denon AVR-X4400H, I am not in a hurry to upgrade either but if the next Marantz AVPs don't go back to the AK4458/4490 or better DAC IC then I will likely go with the AVM 70 by year end of early 2023, but that will be for their much lower price only. I hope that won't be the case because I really don't want to lose the ability to tweak with the MultEQ Editor App and Ratbuddyssey. Anthem ARC may be very good for practical use, but I don't find it as flexible in customizing so as a toy I prefer Audyssey.:D That's just my opinion based on my own research, and I know I would most likely be an outlier on this.

The AVM 70 has very respectable bench test results and in my opinion, is probably the best AVP at its current price point.
 
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I would say no because:

- Even if they are available near the end of this year, I will be disappointed that they still won't have HDMI 2.1. Apparently HDMI 2.1a that hopefully would clean up all the bugs should be out by that time. Are they going to provide a free hardware upgrade to 2.1 or 2.1a? You may not need 2.1, but for $3,500 more it would be nice to have that >2.5X transmission bit rate (a little bit of future proofing perhaps..) capability included.

- Anthem does not published as much specs as Marantz, take a look of the owner's manual, 70 pages from cover to cover and that is for all of their MRX AVRs and AVMs including the AVM90!!?? 70 pages covering 6 different products vs 199 pages for just yours/and mine AV8801. Did I miss something or they did?:D
https://manuals.anthemav.com/media/manuals/mrx-avm_en.pdf I am sure they are more skillful at writing manuals but the gap would seem too big to close.;)

- You seem impressed by the specs posted by Marantz for the AV8801 (I still don't know what kind of specs you have on it that I don't..), so I suspect you may not like the Anthem's seemingly lack of detailed specs but again that's just my opinion, please read the linked manual and see it for yourself. I would love to hear back from you on this.

- About the 4 independent subwoofer outputs feature, we know each will have its own preamp/DAC, but I am not sure if they can also EQ each subwoofer independently or just time align them like Marantz's. Not that I believe it is necessary, nor do I know it is a better way, but I would like to know one way or another.

Regardless, I am not aware of any .2 channel available for movies, or even music, let alone .4 so while I agree it is a good feature to have 4, I cannot imagine it would make any audible difference between the 0.2 that your Marantz already offer, in being able to time align two subwoofers. If you ask Audyssey, they will tell you to time align 4 subs, you can wire them in two groups and that as long as the two in each group are equidistance than it will be just as good. I am sure Audyssey would be biased in saying that but it does make some sense to me, so I will leave it to you to research on the two groups of two vs 4 independent scenarios.

In my opinion, even if they can EQ each sub channel truly independently, I am not sure if it would make any difference, let alone a "better" or "worse" difference.

As for the DAC, I remember reading it from some 3rd party sites that the AVM 70 has the AK4490 and the 90 has the AK4499. The 4499 has much higher SINAD but even at the level of the AK4490, the DAC IC would typically not be the bottleneck anyway. Again, the info is not from an Anthem source so it could just be hearsay, I suppose you can contact Anthem, or ask the question on AVS and see if some of the owners have the information directly from Anthem already.

Since I don't miss the "sound" of my AV8801 at all after replacing it with my cheap Denon AVR-X4400H, I am not in a hurry to upgrade either but if the next Marantz AVPs don't go back to the AK4458/4490 or better DAC IC then I will likely go with the AVM 70 by year end of early 2023, but that will be for their much lower price only. I hope that won't be the case because I really don't want to lose the ability to tweak with the MultEQ Editor App and Ratbuddyssey. Anthem ARC may be very good for practical use, but I don't find it as flexible in customizing so as a toy I prefer Audyssey.:D That's just my opinion based on my own research, and I know I would most likely be an outlier on this.

The AVM 70 has very respectable bench test results and in my opinion, is probably the best AVP at its current price point.

That may be a dealbreaker not having HDMI 2.1, I thought I was reading that wrong. I don’t know what’s wrong with these companies, including Marantz and all the others for the most part.

I am not happy with the specs on my Marantz at all, although I’ll give it a little bit of a break because it’s 9 or 10 years old. I emailed Marantz about their underwhelming specs and measurements, and they just brushed me off.

It’s been said that they tune by ear quite a bit, how true that is I don’t know. But I’m not going back to the same brand more than likely, unless they do better.

All this being said, I did an AB test on a transparent XLR switcher, between my Marantz, and the Freya preamp. Both were fed by a topping D 90 playing Amazon HD, level matched, Marantz in pure direct mode… I could hear zero difference, not even a little bit. Remember that the Freya was measured to be transparent right here on ASR. I didn’t need to be blindfolded because it was instant there was no difference to my ears. But I’m not 25 again, I don’t hear like I used to so I’ll rephrase and say everything at or below 15Khz sounded the same to me. But I still want my next one to measure a lot better than most of them that I see measured today. The anthem AVM 70 for less than $4000 is very tempting. But I’m going put that temptation aside for another year or two

So my search continues, it has to be pretty future proof, because I tend to keep my gear a long time, and I’m not chasing every new codecs that comes along.
 
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I’ll rephrase that, I’m not happy with the way the new Marantz products measure, but for the most part I have been happy with mine. But i’m under no illusion that is not easily out spec’d today. But every new model I’ve seen can barely break a 100 SINAD score, while everybody says that’s not important… except for our host who is doing the measuring. I’ll agree with Amir, for this kind of money it needs to measure a whole lot better.

There’s going to be an A/V revolution, and if not buy one of the current companies, than by someone with a Topping mentality is going to come in and snatch this out of the hands of the old dinosaurs. They have already done this in a couple of areas. So things will change when people start demanding better, instead of paying $3000-$20,000 for what is underwhelming in my opinion, at least in independent measuring. Benchmark also did this. It’s either that or one of these Chinese owned companies are going to come in and blow everybody out of the water for less than $4,000.
 

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Gene over at Audioholics has a current video on the importance of individual sub outputs (vs parallel). I do have 4 subs in my HT setup and will almost certainly spring for the AVM90 largely because of the importance of sub integration. However, the current ARC Genesis program recommends treating all subs as one, although you can equalize them independently (in the STR products) if you wish. In my two channel setups with an STR pre the "treating them as one" has sounded the best. So who knows, but if I had one or two subs I'd go with the AVM70.
 
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Gene over at Audioholics has a current video on the importance of individual sub outputs (vs parallel). I do have 4 subs in my HT setup and will almost certainly spring for the AVM90 largely because of the importance of sub integration. However, the current ARC Genesis program recommends treating all subs as one, although you can equalize them independently (in the STR products) if you wish. In my two channel setups with an STR pre the "treating them as one" has sounded the best. So who knows, but if I had one or two subs I'd go with the AVM70.

Thanks for filling me in on that, I will check that out. I still don’t have a problem going from one sub out to daisy chaining my three together. It’s not that hard to integrate them all.

Thanks for the post, and I probably should just grab the 70.
 

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Gene over at Audioholics has a current video on the importance of individual sub outputs (vs parallel). I do have 4 subs in my HT setup and will almost certainly spring for the AVM90 largely because of the importance of sub integration. However, the current ARC Genesis program recommends treating all subs as one, although you can equalize them independently (in the STR products) if you wish. In my two channel setups with an STR pre the "treating them as one" has sounded the best. So who knows, but if I had one or two subs I'd go with the AVM70.

If you can group them into two groups of two and the grouped two are more or less equidistance, then two independent sub outs such as that offered by the D+M AVRs/AVPs should be able to do a good job, without using any minidsp that are limited to 2 V max and would create more cable cluttering without little to gain. That would be the case with Audyssey but I would think ARC Genesis should be just as good, or better.
 
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What cable clutter? Lol. These are also on RCA switcher, and I run two separate preamps into them. I had a hard time getting the correct bass out of my room, it is a large room so I went nearfield. A huge amount of headroom from these subs.
 

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peng

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But every new model I’ve seen can barely break a 100 SINAD score, while everybody says that’s not important… except for our host who is doing the measuring. I’ll agree with Amir, for this kind of money it needs to measure a whole lot better.

If I understood Amir correctly, he isn't that concern with the mid 90 to 100 dB SINAD in terms of distortions, but it is the noise part that he pointed out would be audible if you have a quiet room, under some conditions.

You said you couldn't hear any hum/hiss (so I assume any kind of noise..) from the AV8801, I don't know how quiet your room is but as I mentioned before I could hear mine, even my $2,000 preamp that has the basic features if I crank the volume up high enough, and my room has a noise floor of 20-30 dB within the audio band. I believe the AV8801 can manage on Amir's bench based on all available measurements on the 8801, 8805 and 7705 that I have read so far and 85 dB, if dominated by noise, would be clearly audible in a quiet room under certain conditions. So I would guess for you, 85 dB SINAD should be fine for you in terms of threshold of audibility. If I am right on this, but of course I could be wrong, then the Anthem AVM 70's 99 dB SINAD should keep you happy right, I mean for <$3,500.

By the way, you may be interested in the following very informative write ups on SINAD and audibility:



 

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What cable clutter? Lol. These are also on RCA switcher, and I run two separate preamps into them. I had a hard time getting the correct bass out of my room, it is a large room so I went nearfield. A huge amount of headroom from these subs.

When I was using it, I had it connected between the pre outs and the power amp and subwoofers.
 
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If I understood Amir correctly, he isn't that concern with the mid 90 to 100 dB SINAD in terms of distortions, but it is the noise part that he pointed out would be audible if you have a quiet room, under some conditions.

You said you couldn't hear any hum/hiss (so I assume any kind of noise..) from the AV8801, I don't know how quiet your room is but as I mentioned before I could hear mine, even my $2,000 preamp that has the basic features if I crank the volume up high enough, and my room has a noise floor of 20-30 dB within the audio band. I believe the AV8801 can manage on Amir's bench based on all available measurements on the 8801, 8805 and 7705 that I have read so far and 85 dB, if dominated by noise, would be clearly audible in a quiet room under certain conditions. So I would guess for you, 85 dB SINAD should be fine for you in terms of threshold of audibility. If I am right on this, but of course I could be wrong, then the Anthem AVM 70's 99 dB SINAD should keep you happy right, I mean for <$3,500.

By the way, you may be interested in the following very informative write ups on SINAD and audibility:




I appreciate your input, and sometimes we need to get brought back to reality. The reality is I don’t do that much home theater anymore, but I’d do so. If I want to be even more honest… having 9.3 as I do now doesn’t make me unhappy. I still get wowed with a good sounding blu-ray disc.

I will probably go with the AVM 70, maybe I’ll get fortunate and catch it on a closeout. I really would like something that measured stellar, because I tend to keep my gear for a long time. The AV8801 is only one of my preamps, I have several others for two channel that I switch out every now and then. Before I think about a new preamp, I need to get my treatments all the way in place on my walls, set my bass traps up correctly, and basically just button up my room. I moved here about a year ago and started from nothing, and it needs to be finished.

Thanks for posting.
 
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