It wasn’t so much that for me but more a lack of cohesion/integration. Front to back/side surround blending wasn’t really there. It was like the sounds were being placed were they should be without blending it all together, it was quite odd.
Stereo or 2 channel was a bit amiss as well. The centre imaging was missing and music sounded cold and emotionless, not engaging at all.
When they’re available I’ll see if I can get a home demo from someone.
I have to say that’s pretty much the opposite of my experience. I know all our tastes are different, but I would imagine something was seriously wrong with the set-up to give you that impression.
One thing that tends not to be mentioned as much in the context of multichannel AVR’s compared to stereo amplifiers, but I think it just as valid, is amp/speaker matching. What speakers did you listen to the Anthem with? Maybe the speakers’ properties were sapping the Anthem’s strengths rather than playing to them?
Another factor that takes some experimentation is the crossover. My Dali’s are really super in the 50hz-100hz region, so my initial setup of an 80hz crossover wasn’t doing the system any favours. Crossing over lower (50hz) while maintaining a fairly high LFE (120hz) really helped the front 3 speakers to play to their strengths, but also allowed the sub to open up the soundstage still further.
As a generalisation, there is more to get wrong in a typical AVR’s set-up compared with a vanilla (non-DSP) stereo amp, so maybe that was the issue?
I have to say my own experience with the Anthem is incredibly dynamic, exciting, foot-tapping (with multichannel music of course) and wonderfully clear. Actually although I’m only running 5.1, front to back panning is fantastic. But then I don’t have an enormous room (about 3.7m x 4m) and my rear dipoles probably help with the feeling of cohesion. But in my previous home I wasn’t using dipoles and my experience was just as positive, albeit different. The rear soundstage was smaller, but panning was a little sharper and more snappy.
Certainly I’m happy with my Anthem/Dali/MA Silver combo, it was great with my previous ancient Ruarks and I’ve heard the amp driving some high end Paradigms, which sounded superb (as you can imagine, with Paradigm being Anthem’s sister company). But maybe there are some speakers that just don’t harmonise with the Anthem too well?