Marantz vs. Arcam

@neoshah Thanks. I have a modern Anthem and the EQ limitations is making me look elsewhere. In particular, I want to hand craft what the EQ does, and the Anthem has no such feature.  The more advanced Marantz units and DirecLive should give me full manual parametric EQ capabilities.

@erik_squires Hey! Anthem does have a room correction software. Although not sure how it compares to Dirac in the Arcam.

Guess best to stick with what ones comfortable with. 

Cheers 

@neoshah I’m not pleased with the EQ settings Anthem’s room correction makes. Unfortunately I didn’t pay more attention to the details. While it has many configuration options it does not let me have what I most desire: Hand crafted parametric EQ settings. As a result I have a pair of miniDSP units behind my Anthem MRX receiver, and have completely disabled the Anthem Room Correction.

I believe that DiracLive lets me hand adjust EQ settings without having to rely on it’s room correction if I wish. I believe the advanced Audyssey EQ in some Marantz units also let me do this. I'm also shifting more towards powered DSP capable speakers as well.

I’m looking to simplify my listening experience which has shifted greatly from music to movies over the past couple of years. One thing I look forward to in doing so is reducing the number of separate devices I have right now from 6 (HT receiver, 2 channel integrated, DAC, streamer, 2x miniDSP) to 1.

@erik_squires ok.

I didn't personally have to bother with the setup, so no clue on these details.

Just sharing what I heard. 

Cheers 

I have a Marantz Cinema 60 and normally I use HT bypass on my preamp for music. I tried the Cinema 60 for the first time with music (2ch) the other day as a preamp (Mc462 as amp) with no room correction. It honestly seemed fine. I did feel like the soundstage was an hair less but not positive.the channel separation on my 60 is not as good as the AV10.  
 

If I walked out of the room and back in I am not sure I could pass a blind test. It has made me wonder if an AV10 could work as an all in one unit for me. I like to manage my subs and have been thinking about doing this differently lately.

so I think if you are not super pick an AVR could work. A few times I bought other brands instead of Marantz and always regretted it and went back to Marantz.

the “Marantz” sound is in the DAC filter. It starts rolling off at 12k and is down 0.5db at 15k and 2.5db at 20k. On the higher end models you can turn the filter off and choose “filter #2” which is totally flat.

Measurements of the AV10 here.