Thanks @erik_squires .  Much more than just an opinion.  I really appreciate it.

Jerry

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 If you say it is not user friendly, then it must be hopeless.  the best time to avoid a frustrating piece of equipment is before you buy it.

I'm starting to look at Marantz.  I think the Cinema 40 will work for me.  

I'm in no hurry so I'll keep reading for a while.

Thanks again.

jerry

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.

I have read , a while ago , that for 2 channels music , Audio Control

was very good

Concert XR-4 7.1.4

May be more expensive than Marantz ,Denon, Yamaha .... but ....