The Anthem 720 (1 Viewer)

[Doug Smith]

Pulled the trigger and replaced my old Marantz with the new Anthem 720. I pretty much went all in and spent over six grand getting a professional installation done - adding the Anthem, some new Elac Atmos speakers, Apple TV, Sonos, etc. as well as the renovations to go with it. I kept my original Mission, Carrera , and Velodyne speakers But what the hey - I just retired and am going to spend my dotage in video/audio bliss. Some observations. The Anthem is unbelievable. The sound quality is excellent and speaker calibration through the ARC system is spot on. I used to play with my sound meter endlessly with the old Marantz and using the ARC system and having it done professionally will save me countless hours. The Anthem manual is pretty much useless unless your a techie going in. I'm not and so far I can't even figure out how to change the listening mode while watching regular TV (eg. changing a 2.0 TV broadcast to AnthemLogic Cinema). Also the two Atmos speakers are on when the two front speakers are in use. Even when it is not an Atmos broadcast. I find this odd, but the technician said this is the norm. It is not generally a problem,, but I would like to turn them off when listening to DVD Audio or SACD. I have always been a fan of those two types of audio and am finding listening to them again through an HDMI cable to be quite different than when I used to listen to them with analog audio cables through the back of my Oppo. I hadn't expected that. The old Maranz didn't have an HDMI input. All in all very satisfied with the Anthem and other add ons so far.

 

[Dave Upton]

Doug,

Great to hear about your upgrade and experience. Anthem products are premium and expensive, but they sure do work well