Hi-Fi News
June 2009
‘Anthem has produced a genuine Statement of the multichannel art…Thoroughly inspired.’
Score: Outstanding Product
Reviewed by Richard Stevenson
Tested by Paul Miller
In the review
Richard comments on the sound without ARC:
‘With all the EQ disabled, the bass management bypassed and the power amps set on kill (0dB) rather than stun (–6dB), the sound is somewhere between epically huge and monumentally vast… the Anthem’s ability to create a ‘live’sound is second to none.’
Richard comments on the ARC with music:
‘However, running the risk of being thrown out of The Hi-Fi Club for blasphemy, it is engaging the ARC EQ system that elevates the Anthem from plain old excellent to absolutely magical… Switching between ARC EQ off and on is thedifference between Chris Botti playing live in your room,and putting you in the venue where Chris Botti is playing live. I wheeled in four independent listeners for this test (just in case I was going mad, finally) and four out of four voted for the ‘ARC on’ sound.’
On the ARC with films:
‘The Anthem’s revelationary experience just gets better when you switch to movies too… A romp through The Fifth Element movie (on Blu-ray) allowed the Anthem trio to unleash its full potential in terms of power and dynamic range while remaining thoroughly impressive in detailing and clarity. With ARC engaged the performance is further elevated, bringing a breathy, goose-bump inducing scale to the Diva’s voice the like of which I have never previously achieved in my system.’
The Lab Report summarises:
‘This is by far the most versatile and powerful HD AV processor we’ve tested and in almost every respect it sets the benchmark.’
It details:
‘Distortion tracks symmetrically through all outputs versus frequency (less than 0.0011% from 20Hz-20kHz) and versus digital level (as low as 0.0002% at –20dBFs) while channel separation is >105dB at any frequency. The processor handles 44.1kHz-96kHz data through S/PDIF and HDMI, upsampling all inputs to 192kHz and yielding a response that stretches to –0.4dB/40kHz with 24-bit/96kHz data.’
On the amplifiers:
‘The P2/P5 power amplifi ers are no less impressive, offering a massive 375W/8ohm per channel increasing to nearly 1.5kW into 2ohm under dynamic conditions. Moreover, the amps have such low dynamic distortion (0.0006%), the black 8ohm trace required a revision to our default graph axis.’