Anthem STR or Lyngdorf TDAI 2170?

jwh2, the Lyndorf has the best build quality but forgetting about the money the Anthem STR preamp has the best feature set and the more usable (understandable) Room correction/bass management. If My TACT died tomorrow and I could not afford a Trinnov Amethyst I would absolutely go for the Anthem STR preamp. I do not care for integrated amps as putting a super huge power supply next to a preamplifier grates on my neurons. For the money it may be the finest preamp you can buy today. 

Grats on your perches I'd be interested in knowing what you think of the Micomega and its version of room correction. 

I've heard the Anthem Pre with arc room correction and was quite impressed. I was also looking at the Anthem-Lyndorf but was hesitant on the class D and Digitizing my Analogue sources. 

So I'm still on the fence I also have a %@#$ of a room to deal with. 

Hey, so I've had the M150 in rotation now for a few months with MARS (their room correction solution) enabled and while there is definitely a noticeable improvement in sound stage, and general clarity and detail, it's by no means a game-changer. I've been feeding it phono, TV (via optical) and digital through Tidal/Roon. One thing to note as well as that Roon is still not supported which means I'm running a NUC via USB as a workaround.

Overall I'm very happy with my purchase but would have loved to be able to compare everything side by side to be sure that the Anthem or Lyngdorf was worth passing over.

I've compared Lyngdorf 2170 and Micromega M100 at home extensively, and ended up with M100. Personally, I think M100 has edge over on 2170 on warmth and the sparkle in the music I was looking for. 

I will add some info here that I think people will find useful.

I am back to comparing DSP because a too big for my room speaker is available for me to buy. For some unexplained reason I want to put this unsuitable speaker into my room instead of something smaller and more sane.

My room is treated and currently sounds very good with KEF LS50’s.

The 3 DSP engines I am considering are:

SPACE OPTIMIZATION - Linn Selekt DSM (heard it)
ROOM PERFECT - Lyngdorf 3400 (I heard the 2170)
ARC3 - Anthen STR pre (not heard)

I was first thinking of going with the Linn + Katalyst DAC upgrade because it sounded very good. However, after a lot of research I realized that ROON and Linn are strange bedfellows and not a good long term marriage. So the Linn is out.

Now it is down to the Lyngdorf and Anthem. The arguments presented here about the Lyngdorf sounding dry I agree with, but I am now looking at warm sound speaker which may compensate for that. However, saying this, I have demoed the 2170 with an external amp and the sound was awesome, not dry. The preamp in the Lyngdorf is very good. The unit is dead quiet as a Benchmark AHB2 amp, it sounds great at low volumes, the ROOM PERFECT will also work with an external amp. I confirmed the last point with Lyngdorf.

I do not know how important or audible the following feature is.

ICC (INTER-SAMPLE CLIPPING CORRECTION)

When music is being mastered, the level is often very high; upon analysis, you will often find several consecutive maximum samples, indicating something has been clipped away from the original signal. Audio that exceeds 0 dBFS (decibels relative to full scale) will sound very compressed because the headroom is nonexistent. This harsh sound is an unfortunate trend in the music industry and is typically referred to as “the loudness war.”

In order to compensate for this, we have created ICC (Inter-sample Clipping Correction). With ICC, the TDAI-2170 can automatically adjust up to 12dB headroom in the signal processing to avoid clipping of the signal. Through this you will enjoy the full dynamic range and a more natural sound.

I was not able to test ROOM PERFECT and the room I demoed was big so the effects of DSP would likely have been minimal. The Lyngdorf has a built-in Ethernet (RJ45) streamer, though Ethernet was not my preferred connection option. I will check out the EtherREGEN as a solution to lower RJ45 noise into the Lyngdorf if I go that way.

https://uptoneaudio.com/products/etherregen

The Anthem STR pre does not have a (maybe noisy) amp inside it’s chassis like the Lyngdorf. It also does not have the ICC feature of the Lyngdorf. However, it has defeatable ARC on the analogue inputs (I have a few). It has balance speaker settings which could be useful to me since I do not sit right in the middle of my speakers. The feature set on the Anthem seems better to me than the Lyngdorf. The sound of the Anthem pre has been described as a little bright in some reviews.

https://www.hifi-advice.com/blog/review/digital-reviews/spdif-dac-reviews/anthem-str-preamplifier-and-power-amplifier/

Which is not necessarily a bad thing for the warmish speaker I am considering.

The Anthem STR pre does not have a media player built-in like the Lyngdorf, I would use my computer as the medial player. I prefer this and would connect with a Fiber Optical cable to a Sonore Sgniture Rendu SE Optical.

https://www.ui.com/unifi-switching/unifi-switch-8-150w/ + http://sonore.us/systemoptique.html (the Signiture Rendu replaces the Optical in the diagram).

I will soon head out to demo the Anthem Integrated (without the amp) and the Lyngdorf 2170 integrated (without the amp) connected with an external Class AB amp. This will not answer the issue of which DSP is better but at least I can test the preamp and DAC on each. The room I will demo may not be ideally suited to show the benefits of DSP.

I hope I like the Anthem better because the feature set is perfect and not wasteful for my needs.