Anthem AVM 30 vs. Parasound Halo C2

Some audio mag like Sound and Vision or something like that (I'm not really sure which one it was), but it was this month's issue I'm pretty sure, compared the avm 30, halo c1 and a krell. The AVM was the cheapest of the bunch and that was the one they picked as their favorite. Hopefully someone will clue in to which magazine I'm talking about and clarify this:)

Yes , S&V this month.

I was disgusted that the S&V review didn't discuss the Bryston SP 1.7 - I own one and feel it blows away the Parasound (and I ever was impressed by any of my friend's anthem stuff). Haven't heard the Krell, so I can't comment there... but having made the move from a 1055 myself, well, I don't think it can get much better than the Bryston - 20yr warranty, 2ch bypass, absolute purist piece (no video switching!!). Yeah there's obviously a lot better straight-up 2ch stuff out there, but this is the best sounding (for music) HT pre-pro I've ever encountered.

When dealing with high-end pre/pros, I think your decision should primarily come down to features that matter most to you.

I will have an AVM 30 in my system by the weekend. It's extensive bass management features were the most appealing to me compared to others. It's a feature that can truly improve the sound in almost any room, so that's what was important to me. We'll see how it turns out, but sorry I can't give more info or a direct comparison to the Halo.

I believe the Halo has some impressive self-calibration features, so that feature may be important to you.

The self calibration on the parasound was 'ok' at best, it did a HORRIBLE job with the sub - it wanted to think our DD15 was 45ft away and cranked the gain up by approx. 15db!!!! can you say oops? any person even without an SPL meter can manually enter speaker distances and guess gain better than most auto-setup things, it's for (no offense to anyone on the 'gon) folks with far more money than knowledge who are either too cheap to have someone configure it for them, or don't know well enough to set it up themselves.