Anthem ARC - Well, it's not that great.

Hi Everyone,

I don’t have the time and energy to do a full write up with frequency plots and the like, but I want to say that after pushing Anthem HT processors for a while, I lived with the MRX 540 and it’s ARC and honestly it doesn’t sound good.

Sucks the dynamics out of the soundtracks and at the same time fails to improve the speaker to speaker matching. In other words, you don’t end up with an immersive sound field.

I’m so sad and disappointed. As you know, I am a big proponent of using EQ and DSP correctly to enhance all listening. I’m just sad that the automatic part of the Anthem Room Correction is just not very good.  I suspect some of this may be the forced multi-point measurements that work much better in large auditoriums than in my modest listening room and couch.

I’m keeping the receiver but going back to using my own EQ curves, something impossible to do in the Anthem.

Best,

Erik