Anthem AVM60 Review (AV Processor)

[danzilla31]

Yeh, it is a quandary. Not sure what to do. My protocol is to get companies to agree to measurements when they send me equipment. Hate to break that promise.

Yeah if my experience with them is the standard right now you might be waiting for awhile still haven't heard back about my avm60. Not your fault. I'll keep peeking on this thread. Someday maybe someday Lol

 

[walt99]

Yeh, it is a quandary. Not sure what to do. My protocol is to get companies to agree to measurements when they send me equipment. Hate to break that promise.

Yes but what's considered a "reasonable" time frame for a response, 30 days, 6 months, a year?
I suspect they have nothing to gain and everything to lose at this point, so why hurry.

 

[lovemusic]

Amir, you need to give them a timeframe for a response (say 3 months). If you haven't heard back within the timeslot, you should feel free to publish your results.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that the second round of measurements for AVM 60 is not flattering.

 

[jtremble]

I think 3 months is way too generous. If they can't respond in a week, it's obviously not a priority for them. Publish it now!

 

[SimpleTheater]

So is @amirm storing the unit in case Anthem disagrees with the findings and asks to redo the tests with some setting turned on/off? There comes a point where you just need a disclaimer at the top of the review. Something like “Anthem is clearly stalling due to yet another flub of a product. This company should be ashamed of this product and ashamed for purposely attempting to take advantage of my good faith in giving them a chance to respond.”

In all seriousness, this lack of response has made my decision super easy, as I will never buy another product from this company. I’ve now officially added them to my do not buy list. GM, VW and Chrysler now have a new member on my list.

 

[jlm70]

Coming from an old (but good sounding) pair of Rotel RSP-1066 pre and RMB-1066 ampli (connected to Dynaudio towers), I’ve just upgraded the ampli to the Anthem MCA525 gen2, and ordered (april 2nd) an AVM70. The old Rotel ampli will manage the new Atmos speakers.
I’m not very concerned about current AVM software issues… I work in the tech world and… software can be fixed (firmware/ARC/app).

Nonetheless I can well understand this damned covid period has (caused deaths and) slowed general manufacturing, not to talk about the AKM Japan factory fire back in oct.2020. Consider AKM dacs production is core to Anthem, and the AKM factory will not be back to production before Q4-2021 at best. We hope Anthem does have a sufficient warehouse of 4490 chips (plus ADCs, etc.)… otherwise it’s still not disclosed if AKM has given their projects to other OEMs to temporarily sustain DACs production (50% of global market dacs… not that little problem…). But it’s sure Anthem will have to add this supply (hope not a redesign) problem to covid (quite seriously considered in Canada/Toronto).
At the moment my AVM70 expected delivery is dated end July… that’s a major problem to me, for several reasons. Yet I’ll stay stick / give trust to Anthem. We’ll see…

 

[Toliandar]

Can only guess that the retest results are not significantly different from the first.

 

[SimpleTheater]

Two days without a review on ASR and Anthem is making Amir sit on this completed review. What a crap of a company.

 

[danzilla31]

Two days without a review on ASR and Anthem is making Amir sit on this completed review. What a crap of a company.

Agreed nobody likes to jump to conclusions but what other conclusion can one make at this point

 

[peng]

Agreed nobody likes to jump to conclusions but what other conclusion can one make at this point

Also, they probably figured that few people know and/or care about the difference in 70 dB or 100 dB SINAD, IMD, SNR etc., that many believe distortions have no correlation to sound quality, but rather it is something magical that certain brands just got it (SQ) right, such as sounding warm and sweet, plus many believe it is AARC that they are buying for, so why bother with measurements??

In reality, what people believe would be the facts, actual facts don't matter..

By the way, you have used/heard AARC already obviously, do you honestly think that in a controlled DBT or even just SBT AB test, you could hear "better" (assuming you heard a difference) sound quality between the latest versions of AARC, Audyssey and even YPAO, especially if limited to below 250 to 600 Hz (or pick a number, just not full range)? It is amazing what people could hear, regardless of performance shown in bench measurements!!

 

[OzarkMtn]

Does anyone have a good telephone number for Anthem customer support? Just picked up a brand new AVM 60 from my dealer and it seems to have a software glitch when attempting to setup Listener Position speaker distances. Thanks

 

[BdoUK]

(905) 564-1994

 

[tparm]

Brilliant piece of kit! As to not wait for Anthem to sort their stuff out or for Yamaha to introduce their new processors I bought a six month old RMC-1L on Audiogon for $2500 and it functions perfectly and sounds brilliant. I'm surprised by all the negative comments relating to Emotiva processors now that I own one although I didn't live through the early days. I sold my A110 after living with both for a month.

https://hometheaterhifi.com/reviews.../anthem-avm-70-preamplifier-processor-review/

 

[SilverWolf]

Brilliant piece of kit! As to not wait for Anthem to sort their stuff out or for Yamaha to introduce their new processors I bought a six month old RMC-1L on Audiogon for $2500 and it functions perfectly and sounds brilliant. I'm surprised by all the negative comments relating to Emotiva processors now that I own one although I didn't live through the early days. I sold my A110 after living with both for a month.

https://hometheaterhifi.com/reviews.../anthem-avm-70-preamplifier-processor-review/

I still have the thing that was the emotiva UMC-1 and a 40% off upgrade card that never expires but is no longer valid. Besides, not a very good investment for us international customers anymore and I feel a lil burnt by them myself. I'd been saving for years but now am investing elsewhere, ended up jumping on a MRX-740. Almost went Denon 8500H but there's no way that size device was going to fit into any spot we have.

 

[peng]

With due respect, I think we have all waited long enough for the AVM60 re-review. At this point I hope @amirm can at least feel free to give ASR members some hints/indications, while still following his principle of not publishing the actual test results before hearing back from Anthem who sent him the test unit.

I would suggest the following minimal information (no actual measurements need to be disclosed) should very well preserve the said principle:

- Did the second unit still measured with generally worse results than the AVR version, that is, the MRX-1120.

- If not, were there speculated reasons (example: the first unit is defective, or its testing procedure related etc..) for the abnormal results of the first unit tested?

If Amir still don't feel comfortable saying anything, then that's fine too because then we know, sort of..

Thank you in advance.

 

[danzilla31]

With due respect, I think we have all waited long enough for the AVM60 re-review. At this point I hope @amirm can at least feel free to give ASR members some hints/indications, while still following his principle of not publishing the actual test results before hearing back from Anthem who sent him the test unit.

I would suggest the following minimal information (no actual measurements need to be disclosed) should very well preserve the said principle:

- Did the second unit still measured with generally worse results than the AVR version, that is, the MRX-1140.

- If not, were there speculated reasons (example: the first unit is defective, or its testing procedure related etc..) for the abnormal results of the first unit tested?

If Amir still don't feel comfortable saying anything, then that's fine too because then we know, sort of..

Thank you in advance.

+1000 to this suggestion thanks for bringing it up!

 

[jakuboleksy]

My AVM 70 just came in and based on this thread and others I have been reading I am leaning toward returning it and holding out for something better, maybe the HTP-1.

 

[amirm]

Ok let me prep the slides and post them.....

 

[amirm]

Alright, here are the results of the second set of tests.

In my communications with Anthem, they said that the problem was that even when reset to factory setting, the data path still included some processing. Instead of going through a long back and forth on how to configure the unit, I asked them to send me one exactly as they would configure and measure. So they did.

I started with my testing with HDMI. I ran into an issue where I could not replicate my measurements from run to run. I don't know what was going on here and this was one of the questions I had into them. Instead of waiting to figure that out, I switched to Toslink input which did produce consistent results. Let's look at our dashboard now:

This is about 3 dB better than what I tested before. Whether this is due to not using HDMI or the config issue Anthem had pointed out, I don't know. Here are the update rankings:

Dynamic range improved by 2 dB:

Jitter looks better but still not proper:

Linearity improved in not showing any truncation:

But again, a rather weak showing.

THD+N versus frequency is very different:

So as you see, the measurements raise as many questions as they answer.

While I appreciate Anthem's cooperation on this, I am not sure new measurements portray a more competitive processor than my first run. We should see a SINAD that is >= 100 dB in this class and we are not there with AVM60.

 

[TimoJ]

@amirm What about AVM70 measurements, didn't you have also that model?