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Anthem Receivers


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Investigating some receiver options for a project and looking at everything from Anthem, Denon, Yamaha, and Audio Control. I've heard a few horror stories about Anthem in general and the C4 driver. I cant determine if the sources who told me this info has a personal problem with Anthem, the local rep firm, or there really are problems.  Anyone running Anthem or have experience with them enough to give an opinion.  

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1 hour ago, cdepaola said:

Investigating some receiver options for a project and looking at everything from Anthem, Denon, Yamaha, and Audio Control. I've heard a few horror stories about Anthem in general and the C4 driver. I cant determine if the sources who told me this info has a personal problem with Anthem, the local rep firm, or there really are problems.  Anyone running Anthem or have experience with them enough to give an opinion.  

Anthem used another developer in the past for their MRX drivers and they had problems with the driver they developed.  As such they approached us about developing a solid driver which we did and released a few months back.  Has had extensive testing by ourselves, Anthem and a bucketload of dealers.

An additional feature we added in that wasn't speced in the scope was that the driver automatically turns on the system when Playfi is detected.  Pretty neat.

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2 hours ago, alanchow said:

Anthem used another developer in the past for their MRX drivers and they had problems with the driver they developed.  As such they approached us about developing a solid driver which we did and released a few months back.  Has had extensive testing by ourselves, Anthem and a bucketload of dealers.

An additional feature we added in that wasn't speced in the scope was that the driver automatically turns on the system when Playfi is detected.  Pretty neat.

I'll second that, whilst I have installed dozens of Anthem MRX receivers using the Annex4 driver that Alan refers to, I had not had any significant issues with it to be honest. It was a little slow at switching inputs, which Alan's driver has resolved, but otherwise has worked perfectly for me so far.

I am now using Alan's driver and as is usually the case from the Chowmain team, the driver has been excellent and and love the ability to switch easily between speaker profiles on the fly.

In our showroom, we have a 5.1.2 channel Atmos system and have 4 separate speaker profiles configured. Using Alan's driver we can switch between a 5.1.2, 5.1, 3.1 or 2.1 channel configuration.

Regarding Anthem AVRs themselves, they are pretty much the only brand we install unless the client's budget dictates otherwise.

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13 hours ago, alanchow said:

Anthem used another developer in the past for their MRX drivers and they had problems with the driver they developed.  As such they approached us about developing a solid driver which we did and released a few months back.  Has had extensive testing by ourselves, Anthem and a bucketload of dealers.

An additional feature we added in that wasn't speced in the scope was that the driver automatically turns on the system when Playfi is detected.  Pretty neat.

So is your driver now the official anthem driver and Annex is not being recommended by anthem anymore?   Also,  what about the annex paradigm/Martin Logan soundbar drivers.   Have you made new ones for those devices?   Thanks!

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29 minutes ago, ejn1 said:

So is your driver now the official anthem driver and Annex is not being recommended by anthem anymore?   Also,  what about the annex paradigm/Martin Logan soundbar drivers.   Have you made new ones for those devices?   Thanks!

As they are free, which would mean Anthem paid for them to be done, I would say so.

http://www.chowmainsoft.com/drivers-for-control4-av

will list what there is

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  • 7 months later...

Yeah, using new MRX740 with official driver and it’s been fine.  I believe the issue with prior models was more the network hardware they used more than most.  I usually used the serial drivers with the previous models but have used IP with success but this new driver works great even using as WiFi only instead of my trusty serial.

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Lots of Anthem discussions, just wanted to chip in on the Audio Control products. The Maestro X7 and X9 which share a common heritage with the JBL SDP-55 and several Arcam products (AV40 I think?) are spectacular audio performers, Dirac Live with bass management changed my world. At least on the Audio Controls flavor the Control 4 serial connection is unstable and the processor to die and become unresponsive over time. To the point where you have to power cycle it to control it. The IP driver doesn't seem to have the problem. Its hard to say whose fault it is as the serial driver spams the processor with constant request.. I.E. for cover art etc when the onboard audio sources have never been engaged etc... when the unit locks up you can see the C4 driver sending the request but no response. Ive seen this with my system and with some customer systems.

I would buy again in a hearbeat, just use the IP drivers. I don't have any Anthem experience so cannot compare and contrast to that, I can say audio output is significantly superior to the Marantz I had before personally and is noticeably better than at least one (older) krell preamp. HDMI switching is quite fast and solid too...You can also disable the on screen display if you have a Lumagen or madVR Envy... good product.

 

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at RAV (sorry, quoting you is declared as spam!?!) Thank you for your efforts. It's not about the STR Integrated Amplifier but it's about the Anthem Integrated 225 (which I bought in 2012). If you know a link, which I didn't find, I would be very grateful!

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On 3/12/2021 at 5:26 AM, iMack said:

at RAV (sorry, quoting you is declared as spam!?!) Thank you for your efforts. It's not about the STR Integrated Amplifier but it's about the Anthem Integrated 225 (which I bought in 2012). If you know a link, which I didn't find, I would be very grateful!

I didn't see the model number you posted and made the assumption it was for the current model.
I don't suspect anyone made a driver for it, it's only recent that Anthem commissioned to have drivers premade.
There are some old AV processor drivers in the database, but not for the integrated.
Anthem has posted the codes, a serial or IR driver could be made.

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On 3/11/2021 at 11:53 PM, mindedc1 said:

Lots of Anthem discussions, just wanted to chip in on the Audio Control products. The Maestro X7 and X9 which share a common heritage with the JBL SDP-55 and several Arcam products (AV40 I think?) are spectacular audio performers, Dirac Live with bass management changed my world. At least on the Audio Controls flavor the Control 4 serial connection is unstable and the processor to die and become unresponsive over time. To the point where you have to power cycle it to control it. The IP driver doesn't seem to have the problem. Its hard to say whose fault it is as the serial driver spams the processor with constant request.. I.E. for cover art etc when the onboard audio sources have never been engaged etc... when the unit locks up you can see the C4 driver sending the request but no response. Ive seen this with my system and with some customer systems.

I would buy again in a hearbeat, just use the IP drivers. I don't have any Anthem experience so cannot compare and contrast to that, I can say audio output is significantly superior to the Marantz I had before personally and is noticeably better than at least one (older) krell preamp. HDMI switching is quite fast and solid too...You can also disable the on screen display if you have a Lumagen or madVR Envy... good product.

Yeah agree i use an Audiocontrol XR6 as my head end processor and 2 5 channel ATI power amps.  Had MRX720 prior and 7013, Audiocontrol outperformed them both prior to Dirac actually.  Little quirky from time to time but IP driver works fine, sometimes a bit slow.

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  • 1 year later...
  • 8 months later...
On 7/19/2020 at 11:57 PM, alanchow said:

Anthem used another developer in the past for their MRX drivers and they had problems with the driver they developed.  As such they approached us about developing a solid driver which we did and released a few months back.  Has had extensive testing by ourselves, Anthem and a bucketload of dealers.

An additional feature we added in that wasn't speced in the scope was that the driver automatically turns on the system when Playfi is detected.  Pretty neat.

** Nevermind -- I figured it out **

 

I am probably missing something but on the MDX driver I see volume controls but no actual "power" control for each zone. How do I actually turn a zone on/off?

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