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Anthem AVM70 Review (AV Processor)

MacCali

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I picked mine up last night. Did a 5 positions ARC calibration, didn't like the result at all, missed my Denon already. To be fair, I spent lots of time trying to perfect the Denon/Audyssey with the Editor App and Ratbuddyssey so I need to at least spend a few hours on Arc especially I am new to it, with no experience whatsoever.

Just checked it with REW before I do the second run. The plots confirmed while it sounded bad. I must have done something wrong with mic positions or something. Like most things about the unit though so far but also missed the Denon's flexibility in settings such as DEQ, DV, HDMI settings etc....

What's the eta of yours?
They are idiots man, they flagged my card for fraud and canceled my order lol. I was like wtf, I even sent them copies of my address and bank statements to confirm it's not fraud and they said okay they will forward it to the transaction merchant

They said I have to reorder it, so I ordered again, says it ships December 9th. I dont care though.

The guy on one review mentioned that, for being so highly rated on REQ the unit changes the sound which isn't pleasant and you need to go in a adjust everything and the topics at hand for someone at my level of experience will be easier to mess up rather than improve. Virtually seems like I am going to have someone come in to integrate the system into my room for the best performance, which means even more money.

I will say though, I never kept room eq for my marantz. I did it once and I did not like it and so I just keep everything as the speakers intended and to my ears it's sounds amazing. Maybe just pure luck

I am feeling a bit skeptical on this unit to be honest, I am starting to feel as though it maybe a waste of money, regardless of how many channels I use. I was diving deeper into the bugs the unit has, and some have it some dont. People say if you notice these few bugs then it's best to return and get another one, honestly dont really have the time to keep returning and hoping to get a unit that's bug free.

I will just take my shot on my first one.

Also after looking, I think I may just cancel it and go with Audio advice. I can actually get the clearance price and also 7% cash back. 3% from rakutan and 4% from my CC and that would be nice cause that's almost an additional 200 dollars off

Just feel bad buying from an audio shop and returning it, absolutely do not get there company philosophy. You didn't want to release 8k originally cause it's super buggy and has issues but then you go and release the processor with so many personalization options which are phenomenal and they all dont even function
 

peng

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They are idiots man, they flagged my card for fraud and canceled my order lol. I was like wtf, I even sent them copies of my address and bank statements to confirm it's not fraud and they said okay they will forward it to the transaction merchant

They said I have to reorder it, so I ordered again, says it ships December 9th. I dont care though.

The guy on one review mentioned that, for being so highly rated on REQ the unit changes the sound which isn't pleasant and you need to go in a adjust everything and the topics at hand for someone at my level of experience will be easier to mess up rather than improve. Virtually seems like I am going to have someone come in to integrate the system into my room for the best performance, which means even more money.

I will say though, I never kept room eq for my marantz. I did it once and I did not like it and so I just keep everything as the speakers intended and to my ears it's sounds amazing. Maybe just pure luck

I am feeling a bit skeptical on this unit to be honest, I am starting to feel as though it maybe a waste of money, regardless of how many channels I use. I was diving deeper into the bugs the unit has, and some have it some dont. People say if you notice these few bugs then it's best to return and get another one, honestly dont really have the time to keep returning and hoping to get a unit that's bug free.

I will just take my shot on my first one.

Also after looking, I think I may just cancel it and go with Audio advice. I can actually get the clearance price and also 7% cash back. 3% from rakutan and 4% from my CC and that would be nice cause that's almost an additional 200 dollars off

Just feel bad buying from an audio shop and returning it, absolutely do not get there company philosophy. You didn't want to release 8k originally cause it's super buggy and has issues but then you go and release the processor with so many personalization options which are phenomenal and they all dont even function

I have not noticed any bugs yet except when I first tried it on Netflix, it wouldn't bitstream so everything played in PCM 2.0. After a while, changing sources a couple times, bitstream was back and has since been doing Dolby Atmos, 5.1 DD+ etc., not more 2.0 PCM stuff. That may be a bug or may be I messed up some setting accidentally, more like an intermittent bug though. Overall I feel the AVM70 is solid, seem like bug free so far except the suspected one I just mentioned.

Regarding ARC Genesys, I just did a second run, this time I followed some Youtuber's suggestion to do the X pattern when only 5 positions are done, and the results are much better. Still not as good as my Audyssey results, not even close but I think I need to do 8 positions like I have always done with Audyssey. I would never let anyone come in to do it for me because in my experience you can't rely on their estimated/projected results that always looked great but you need to check it with REW. If the installer you hire is not going to use REW or something to plot and show you the results then you may as well save the money and do it yourself, either check it with REW or if you don't want to use REW then go by ears, keep trying different mic patterns until you like what you hear. It is not really hard to do and there are a few videos you can watch and learn. After the second run, I bumped up my subwoofers levels up a couple dB and it sounds much better now. The first run sounds worse than with ARC off, noticeably worse.
 

MacCali

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Currently I only got a two seat sofa in my theater room and honestly I am the only one that is in here when I watch movies, does that mean I need to do an 8 position room calibration too??? o.o

@peng yea man there's going to be some issues, I think the AVS forum covers a bunch of it on their thread for the AVM line. It's just as pointed out that for basically 3699, which was what it was selling for that's crazy. Everything should be on point and it seems like they just released a beta version or rushed to just get it out on the market for the pandemic since people were probably home all the time and wanted to capitalize on the market demand. Then it was sold out all the time

I'm just surprised that by this point they still haven't fixed a lot of these problems, but as pointed out it's unclear whether it's a software or hardware related issue.
 

Descartes

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So from what I read and if you watch Audioholics video it seems that the problems have been fixed and ARC works very well indeed!
 

peng

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Currently I only got a two seat sofa in my theater room and honestly I am the only one that is in here when I watch movies, does that mean I need to do an 8 position room calibration too??? o.o

@peng yea man there's going to be some issues, I think the AVS forum covers a bunch of it on their thread for the AVM line. It's just as pointed out that for basically 3699, which was what it was selling for that's crazy. Everything should be on point and it seems like they just released a beta version or rushed to just get it out on the market for the pandemic since people were probably home all the time and wanted to capitalize on the market demand. Then it was sold out all the time

I'm just surprised that by this point they still haven't fixed a lot of these problems, but as pointed out it's unclear whether it's a software or hardware related issue.

True, if you look through the fixes and changes (see change log link below) you can see the large number of issues from version 1.103.133 Host firmware 61 (mine is shipped with) to the one I updated to. I think those are just versions of Arc Genesis, not FW. That's a lot for owners who purchased it from launch time in 2020 to endure. If I had bought it back then I would be pissed and returned it for sure even if I had to pay a fee. As it is now I am sure there are still bugs but must be very minor types and hopefully all fixable via FW. That's why I would never consider Anthem's AVP/AVRs as I believe they sophisticated enough to be prone to bugs and even design related issues that could be a little more difficult to deal with by small manufacturers. I finally gave in because based on owners on AVS forum, I got the feeling that they have done a good job (yes, took a long time) addressing the known issues and the single important factor is the Back Friday Sale that dropped the list price from CAD 4,299 to CAD 3,499 (that's below USD 3,000). I would still have not bought one at list price or close to it.

At the current price point, it is CAD 700 less than the 11.1 channel Marantz AV7706, even if I can get 15% off the AV7706, it will still cost more than the AVM70. The Marantz has 8K but that's no use for me. The AVM70 includes a kind of mic that should worth at least $50 more than D+M's and a real good quality tripod that is probably worth $30 to $60.

The AVSF owners thread currently has 726 pages of post to read, that's too much for me to find the REW graphs that I would like to see how they compare with Audyssey and Dirac Live. Once I get to point where it is comparable to Audyssey's I would post some of mine but as it is not it wouldn't be fair because I am still learning and experimenting, though for beginners, if they run ARC themselves once and good great results that I would say they are lucky, talented, or just ignorant, in terms of not knowing better.
 
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Music707

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True, if you look through the fixes and changes (see change log link below) you can see the large number of issues from version 1.103.133 (mine is shipped with) to the one I updated to. I think those are just versions of Arc Genesis, not FW. That's a lot for owners who purchased it from launch time in 2020 to endure. If I had bought it back then I would be pissed and returned it for sure even if I had to pay a fee. As it is now I am sure there are still bugs but must be very minor types and hopefully all fixable via FW. That's why I would never consider Anthem's AVP/AVRs as I believe they sophisticated enough to be prone to bugs and even design related issues that could be a little more difficult to deal with by small manufacturers. I finally gave in because based on owners on AVS forum, I got the feeling that they have done a good job (yes, took a long time) addressing the known issues and the single important factor is the Back Friday Sale that dropped the list price from CAD 4,299 to CAD 3,499 (that's below USD 3,000). I would still have not bought one at list price or close to it.

At the current price point, it is CAD 700 less than the 11.1 channel Marantz AV7706, even if I can get 15% off the AV7706, it will still cost more than the AVM70. The Marantz has 8K but that's no use for me. The AVM70 includes a kind of mic that should worth at least $50 more than D+M's and a real good quality tripod that is probably worth $30 to $60.

The AVSF owners thread currently has 726 pages of post to read, that's too much for me to find the REW graphs that I would like to see how they compare with Audyssey and Dirac Live. Once I get to point where it is comparable to Audyssey's I would post some of mine but as it is not it wouldn't be fair because I am still learning and experimenting, though for beginners, if they run ARC themselves once and good great results that I would say they are lucky, talented, or just ignorant, in terms of not knowing better.

Thank you for sharing your first impressions. I'll keep my fingers crossed for you. Hopefully your efforts will pay off in the end.

The quote below is from the Anthem website and shows some 'critical' versions of ARC Genesis, Network Module and Host Firmware. According to Anthem, 1.103.133 is a Network Module version, not an ARC Genesis version.

1670164486076.png
 

peng

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Thank you for sharing your first impressions. I'll keep my fingers crossed for you. Hopefully your efforts will pay off in the end.

The quote below is from the Anthem website and shows some 'critical' versions of ARC Genesis, Network Module and Host Firmware. According to Anthem, 1.103.133 is a Network Module version, not an ARC Genesis version.

View attachment 247773

That is correct, I actually meant to type the FW version. The change log doesn't list the Genesis versions anyway.
 

Dj7675

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True, if you look through the fixes and changes (see change log link below) you can see the large number of issues from version 1.103.133 (mine is shipped with) to the one I updated to. I think those are just versions of Arc Genesis, not FW. That's a lot for owners who purchased it from launch time in 2020 to endure. If I had bought it back then I would be pissed and returned it for sure even if I had to pay a fee. As it is now I am sure there are still bugs but must be very minor types and hopefully all fixable via FW. That's why I would never consider Anthem's AVP/AVRs as I believe they sophisticated enough to be prone to bugs and even design related issues that could be a little more difficult to deal with by small manufacturers. I finally gave in because based on owners on AVS forum, I got the feeling that they have done a good job (yes, took a long time) addressing the known issues and the single important factor is the Back Friday Sale that dropped the list price from CAD 4,299 to CAD 3,499 (that's below USD 3,000). I would still have not bought one at list price or close to it.

At the current price point, it is CAD 700 less than the 11.1 channel Marantz AV7706, even if I can get 15% off the AV7706, it will still cost more than the AVM70. The Marantz has 8K but that's no use for me. The AVM70 includes a kind of mic that should worth at least $50 more than D+M's and a real good quality tripod that is probably worth $30 to $60.

The AVSF owners thread currently has 726 pages of post to read, that's too much for me to find the REW graphs that I would like to see how they compare with Audyssey and Dirac Live. Once I get to point where it is comparable to Audyssey's I would post some of mine but as it is not it wouldn't be fair because I am still learning and experimenting, though for beginners, if they run ARC themselves once and good great results that I would say they are lucky, talented, or just ignorant, in terms of not knowing better.
Look forward to hearing how ARC Genesis goes for you. It seems all of these automated room correction systems have a learning curve to get the best out of them.
 

peng

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Look forward to hearing how ARC Genesis goes for you. It seems all of these automated room correction systems have a learning curve to get the best out of them.

On out of the box basis, I would rate the ones I have tried and as follow:

DL3 - best overall
XT32 - Easier to use even with if one wants to tweak with the App
ARC - Most complicated and time consuming if you want to do it right and check with REW. Otherwise, one can run it and think it sounds the best based on hearsay, marketing info etc., that may or may not be the case.

I cannot say much about ARC yet for reasons stated before, but I can say for sure that like Audyssey and Dirac, one has to work on it for hours to get the best possible results. There is always exception to the rule though. In this case it was so obvious that I thought it sounded much worse than the Denon and the reasons was equally obvious when I compared the REW graphs for FR and impulse response. With ARC off, this thing does sound good to me but don't ask me to compare it to the Denon though lol because I traded it in and surrendered it the same day I picked up the Anthem. Without doing a side-by-side, anything I say is not going to mean much if anything.
 

peng

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The mic stand is absolutely and ridiculously good, would buy the AVM for that reason alone.:)
 

Descartes

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Fwiw, this is going to be likely much much more once you add amplification. I’m sure you knew that already, but it’s kinda unfair to compare this to the 6700 at the same price, because you’re lacking amps.

After 7 channels of amplification, you’re at or over the price of the 8500, (assuming something like monoprice 7x200 which is roughly $1800), but I’d still personally take the anthem over the denon. But that’s probably my bias because I have an AVM70 8k with monolith m8250x.
How do you like your AVM70 and you Monolith 8250
 

Descartes

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Here you are Gene knows what he is talking about!



Here is a review of the MRX 740

Also this is a startup guide
 
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peng

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Here you are Gene knows what he is talking about!



Here is a review of the MRX 740

Also this is a startup guide

I did watch that video. I don't always believe everything people say on Youtube but having watched so much posts raving about ARC Genesis did influence my decision on not waiting for Marantz's. Having said that, I would like to see Gene posting some graphs. Anyone can say anything about anything right?;)
 

Descartes

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I did watch that video. I don't always believe everything people say on Youtube but having watched so much posts raving about ARC Genesis did influence my decision on not waiting for Marantz's. Having said that, I would like to see Gene posting some graphs. Anyone can say anything about anything right?;)
Very true, there are so many fakes out there! At least he has tried it and in addition own every EQ system there is. I don’t think as an engineer he would say it was good if it was not! He had nothing to gain by posting a video like this. Gene has no problem demystifying marketing bs when he hears it! Plus the fact that like Amir he measures all the equipment he reviews and post the data, is comforting.
 

Descartes

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Thanks Amir.

This looks decent for the application, but not good enough to sway me from a Denon AVR. I do like the layout of the back.
With the last measurements of Denon AVR I will pick Anthem any day
 

sifi36

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I did watch that video. I don't always believe everything people say on Youtube but having watched so much posts raving about ARC Genesis did influence my decision on not waiting for Marantz's. Having said that, I would like to see Gene posting some graphs. Anyone can say anything about anything right?;)

Whilst not Audioholics, AVForums published a glowing review for the AVM 90. There’s a couple of graphs showing the post-correction response measured with REW. They look pretty good to me, though the text talks about limitations around setting a target curve. It’d be useful to know what this means practically.

 

Descartes

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Whilst not Audioholics, AVForums published a glowing review for the AVM 90. There’s a couple of graphs showing the post-correction response measured with REW. They look pretty good to me, though the text talks about limitations around setting a target curve. It’d be useful to know what this means practically.

I like the summary: 9/10

Pros
  • Superb sonic performance
  • Four separate subwoofer outputs
  • ARC Genesis produces excellent sound with zero hassle
  • Rock solid build quality
  • Tremendously easy to use
  • Comprehensive set of connectivity options
Cons
  • ARC Genesis may be too straightforward for some
  • Cheap remote
  • The AVM 70 exists!!!
 

peng

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Whilst not Audioholics, AVForums published a glowing review for the AVM 90. There’s a couple of graphs showing the post-correction response measured with REW. They look pretty good to me, though the text talks about limitations around setting a target curve. It’d be useful to know what this means practically.


That's not bad for sure but he used a very compressed scale in the bass range making it hard to decipher. He also said he could do better manually. Using the same 1/12 smoothing I could tweak Audyssey to achieve within +/- 1 dB in the deep bass range. That's only for fun and the look though, to me, even +/- 5 dB would sound just as good, as long as the dips are narrow.
 
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