2. home-theater
  3. 185756-20253

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

erik_squires

Showing 2 responses by kota1

kota1
2,706 posts
 

@erik_squires

I think it is room dependent, you have a well treated room and it must have overdamped things somewhere. Can you post your before and after graph to discuss, here is mine. This is from my two channel setup in the media room. The before is good but the after is a bit better:

(Paradigm Link Streamer w/ARC>Sony TAZH1-ES dac/pre> Paradigm Active 40 speakers):

 

 

kota1
2,706 posts
 

Also, I think the mic is kind of crap int he upper octaves

The mic I use for Audyssey Pro is calibrated to my system and software, it is a step up from the mic's supplied by either Marantz or Anthem.

There was a blog post by the president of Bryston on this

He’s got a dog in the race but I know the processor they have that does Atmos uses Dirac.

Hoenstly, prior to Atmos, DD and DTS were really amazing

You nailed it on this one. The budget studios get for the blueray mix is peanuts compared to the film track. I stream MCH with an X-Box which has an amazing feature. It has a menu to select the format you want to stream in, lossless 2,5,or 7 channel, DD, DTS, and with a paid upgrade Atmos or DTS-X. If I am watching a musical from the 40’s and want to stream it in atmos, done. If I am listening to tidal stereo recordings and want to stream them in DTS, done. Live recordings sound better to me upmixed in DTS. House and pop sound better in my room in atmos. Sunday morning I like two channel stereo with my coffee, and on and on we go.

 

 

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