8K Ready
The AVM90 ships with HDMI 2.1 full 8K video capabilities built in. Anthem tells us there will be a future hardware update to take the AVM70 to these boards, but they have not announced a price on it yet.
8K may or may not be a big deal for you. If you have a TV capable of 8K, you could connect your 8K sources to it and send the audio back down the HDMI e-ARC connector on your TV. The fact that Anthem added an e-ARC input to the AVM90 and AVM70 makes this work-around possible. Almost all recent TV’s are e-ARC compatible and e-ARC allows for a fully uncompressed object based surround audio signal to pass through, which is pretty cool.
30 Virtual Inputs With Great Lip Sync Capabilities
Both units have 7 HDMI inputs, 3 Toslink digital, 2 Coax Digital, 4 Analog, plus the MM phono preamp. There is also a new e-Arc HDMI connector so you could get a full Dolby Digital signal back from your TV if your like to use your TV apps. Both also have zone 2 audio and HDMI outputs.
Most home theater products lock you into using an HDMI input only once. Not so with Anthem. You can create up to 30 inputs using any combination you wish. Think about watching a sporting event and tuning into the local radio station. Or, you could listen to music while casually watching the stock reports or a news feed.
Some of you who are serious listeners may have noticed there is a bit of difference in lip sync between streaming platforms. Lip Sync problems occur when the audio arrives ahead of the video. Adjustable lip sync at the unit doing the video switching allows you to adjust for this. We even have a lip sync calibration video to help you get to a good starting point.
Another super cool feature on the Anthem AVM70 and AVM90, is the ability to assign a different lip sync for each input, with the range of adjustment from 0-500ms which is very wide compared to some other products. If you are using a home theater with a separate video processor after your AVM, like a madVR Envy or Lumigen, you will really need this as video processors add a delay to the video of around 200-250ms and that is before any delay caused by the streaming source.
So if you get creative, with the virtual inputs, you could set one up for HBO Max, another for Netflix, another for Hulu, and more- all using the same HDMI connection and then set up the different lip syncs for each streaming source and even label that input to be the name of your streaming source. How cool is that!!!! We really love the flexibility this offers.
Web Setup Interface
If typing in 30 names of your virtual inputs using the cursor makes you think that is going to be time-consuming, you’ll be super pleased to know about the great new web interface. All you have to do is download the free software from Anthem, look up the IP address of your processor, (which you can find by selecting the network display) then you have full access to every single part of the setup right from your laptop! This also means you can sit in your primary listening position and quickly fine-tune the settings to really dial in the audio if you wish.
Anthem Room Correction
This is one big reason we love Anthem gear. The room correction they developed called ARC is simply one of the best on the market. The room itself has a tremendous impact on the ultimate sound of your system. The problem is every room will cause certain frequencies to be too loud and others to be canceled out.
Anthem Room Correction takes measurements of the room and smooths out the response. The new version launching concurrently with the AVM90 adds even more great features to better blend subwoofers to main speakers plus perfectly set distances and levels It does all of these in a way that it has no impact on the phase of the sound like some room correction does, and the result is extremely impressive.
Anthem’s latest version of their system is called ARC Genesis. We have found from using other room correction systems that the quality of the microphone can have a big effect on the end result. Anthem was totally aware of this as well and required you to download a config file from their site matching the calibration characteristics of the exact microphone you were going to use.
Luckily for all of us, they knew they could make things even better and set out to completely redesign the microphone they use for ARC. They even designed it to be directional so it would know better about sounds coming from every direction. The new microphone looks much beefier and has a little indicator you will need to point exactly towards the front of the room. This is just so cool the way they push the envelope!