2. home-theater
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Anthem MRX 740 8K as an upgrade to my Denon AVR-X3700H

I have a 7.2 system.  I drive my front speakers using pre-out to my 2 channel system amp that drives my 2 channel system speakers.  I have 2 more sets of floorstanders for side and rear.  2 self powered subs.  Pretty happy with the system. 

Thinking of the upgrade in the subject.  I'm much more well versed in 2 channel sound than AV systems and would appreciate comments. 

I like the same things in theatre however, clear, accurate, and powerful, and dynamic.

For a streamer, are there better options than my LG smart TV delivered to my HT receiver via ARC?  I don't see any discussion of HT specific streamers/decoders.  

Jerry

128x128carlsbad2

Showing 4 responses by erik_squires

erik_squires
15,788 posts
 

@carlsbad2 Of the few DiracLive curves I've seen they look really good and some versions also let you set your own target curves. 

erik_squires
15,788 posts
 

I’d say it is extremely use friendly, if you aren’t paying attention to what it’s doing vs. what you think it should be doing.

In that sense, it is a plug and play system.  

Take careful note of the type of Audyssey each Marantz model has and the features. The low end Audyssey isn’t as flexible.

erik_squires
15,788 posts
 

Anthem adds "Dolby Surround" to what should be straight up Dolby Digital and you can’t disable it.

 

I mistyped. You can disable it, but you can’t stop it from turning on automatically when you switch material. I seem to recall it working better before a more recent firmware upgrade. In other words, you can use the remote MODE button to turn it off for this particular stream, but switch to another and come back and it will return.

Also for whatever reason it no longer recognizees Atmos like it used to from Netflix. Don’t know WTF, but I dont’ trust it is doing what I think it should be doing at all. It’s as bad as my Roomba.

Next, the room correction is hard to use and also not very good.  You must take 6 measurements, no way to disable that, and no way to alter the results very much.  The end result was NOT very good compared to manual EQ matching, and the subwoofer was also not tuned very well.  The reason I'm leaning to Marantz, besides accurately handling Dolby Digital sources is the advanced models allow you to hand craft EQ settings, which would let me get rid of the 2 miniDSP units I have hidden in the back. 

erik_squires
15,788 posts
 

The more I work with Anthem’s latest the more gory it seems.

Stick to Marantz, which has more advanced EQ features and probably handles Surround correctly.

The difference between the Anthem remote and the anthem Web UI has driven me more than a little crazy. Anthem adds "Dolby Surround" to what should be straight up Dolby Digital and you can’t disable it. Conversely, using Dolby Surround to a 2 channel Dolby Digital mix won’t correclty decode center and surround signals from Netflix.

I am supposed to be able to disable Dolby Surround ... but I can't.  It still goes there even when I want it off.

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