Important Last Steps
This part is critical to getting the most out of your Anthem. ARC has now fixed a lot of the acoustic issues in your room, but there are still some settings we need to do.
Distances- Go to the main menu, and select listener position. Select Config 1. Then get out your tape measure and make sure the distances match how far each speaker is from your primary seat.
Bass Management- Go back to the main menu and choose Bass Management. We find ARC will sometimes set speaker crossovers too high. The first one, Subwoofer LPF for LFE should normally be at 120 Hz. For most speakers, all of the rest should be at 80 Hz. Very small speakers could be set to 100 Hz and very large ones to 60 Hz, but for most applications, 80 Hz is preferred.
Final Level Settings- When ARC made adjustments it could have reduced the level of some frequencies. You will want to repeat the level measurements you did earlier. If you have trouble understanding dialog, you may want to make the center channel levels 77 or 78 dB to bring out the dialog more. Also if you are into effects, there is nothing wrong with making the surround, Atmos, and subwoofer settings higher. Everything at 75 dB is where the producer wanted it, but it is your home theater!
Save Your Work- We certainly do not want to forget this one! Go back to the main menu, choose Save/Load settings and save your work.
We should note that as of the time of writing this, Anthem has just released the new models and a new version of ARC Genesis to match. Right now, individual ARC adjustments for more than one subwoofer is not supported but will be in the future. If you purchased your Anthem from Audio Advice, we will alert you when this new feature becomes available. The units that support independent subwoofer adjustments are the MRX1140, AVM70, and AVM90. Those of us with more than one sub will really appreciate everything Anthem plans to do with the update as it will be quite significant in all the areas they plan to measure and adjust for.