This is a review and detailed measurements of the Anthem AVM70. It was sent to me by the company for review and costs US $3799.
The AVM70 has a very modern and attractive front panel and display:
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Company takes full use of the large display as you see with nice icons. Importantly, the interface speed is lightning fast! What a delight it is to finally see an AV product with such good graphics and super responsive UI. Hit a button the remote and the action is taken immediately as are changes including input selection. Whatever application processor they are using must be quite fast with good programming. It is about time we see such implementations especially in higher end of the market.
The back panel shows rich set of connectivity including balanced XLR outputs:
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That is 17 outputs by my count.
I ran the measurements you are about to see by the company. They are close enough that they signed off on it.
Anthem AVM70 Measurements
Our standard dashboard showing distortion and noise of AV processors and receivers has been tough on the class and a big hurdle to get through. Fortunately the AVM70 does well here (in the class of AV products):
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Performance is distortion limited by the third harmonic. Adding all the components and noise, we get a SINAD of nearly 100 dB:
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Since we have more headroom, he is the sweep of out output level with different volume settings:
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Dynamic range is good for the class:
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IMD test shows good performance at the limit:
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Multitone test is along the same lines:
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Ditto for linearity:
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I got more jitter on coax than what the company measured:
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Fortunately levels are below threshold of hearing so not an audible impact.
Filter is the typical slightly lazy one in DAC chips:
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This causes THD+N to rise as frequencies increase in our following test:
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Conclusions
"Grading on a curve" as I do for AV products, the AVM70 is a good performer. It betters the last generation AVM60 in both interface and performance. Unless I am mistaken, the AVM70 is much cheaper than its competitors with so many balanced outputs. Seeing how it matches and exceeds performance of some of them, it seems to be executed well. Hopefully future generations step up the performance more and become competitive with desktop DACs and such.
I am going to recommend the Anthem AVM70.
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