Anthem ARC and Subwoofers - A quick review

For a while now I’ve been saying that a good room correction system was the best choice for most music lovers looking to integrate a subwoofer. Getting a subwoofer to sound glorious is hard work and ARC systems like the Anthem Genesis system promises to fix.

I’ve recently gotten to use an Anthem MRX 540 and evaluated it’s performance. To make a long story short it does a lot of things right, and stops juuuuuust short of doing great.

Like many ARC systems before it, Genesis leaves your system sounding too bright and lean. Not enough bass and too much treble. Here’s the good news: These issues are relatively easy to overcome and what it does right is the hard part:

• Setting the crossover slopes and points
• Minimizing bass nodes
• Integrating multiple measurement points

The overall process to getting great sound with Genesis is the following:

1. Measure the room
2. Let Genesis do it's math magic and accept all of the settings but then ...
3. Change the slope of the subwoofer and main speakers
4. Raise the bass about 4 dB

I’ve written about the technical steps in detail here: