Anthem AVM 90
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Keep the Box
We suggest you keep the shipping box or boxes for at least 30 days. It is actually a great idea to keep boxes for audio products for the life of the product. Having the box and all packing will increase the trade-in value should you decide to move up and they are handy to have should you ever need to send the unit in for repair.
How To Receive a Motor Freight Order
The trucking company will contact you to schedule a convenient time to deliver the order. Please note that you must be present for delivery.
Visually inspect the box to make sure you see no signs of damage. If you notice any damage at all, take some pictures with your phone and make a note of them on the delivery receipt the driver will ask you to sign. If it is obvious that the product is damaged, please refuse the order and contact us immediately at 888.899.8776 or email support@audioadvice.com.
Open your box as soon as possible and inspect the product for damage and contact us if you find anything wrong.
uShip In-Home Delivery
Due to current concerns surrounding COVID-19, uShip is able to offer THRESHOLD SERVICE ONLY at this time. To ensure everyone’s safety, uShip is advising carriers to refrain from making room-of-choice deliveries. Threshold service consists of the shipment being brought into the first door of the address or the lobby of an apartment/condo, and does not include set-up, installation, assembly or debris removal.
What to Expect: Most oversized items will be delivered within 2-3 weeks. Your carrier will place your item inside the first door of the address or the lobby of an apartment/condo.
Appointment Scheduling: Your delivery partner will call 24-48 hours prior to delivery to arrange an appointment window.
How to prepare for in-home delivery:
- Determine the clearest path from the street to your home
- Measure entrances and hallways to ensure your item will fit
- Remove any wall hangings or clutter to ensure a clear path and to prevent damages
- Remove old furnishings to allow placement for your new piece
Check your furniture for damages: We rarely expect damaged furniture, but in the instance it does happen, we have you covered. Once your item’s packaging is removed, check for any damages that may have occurred in transit. Take pictures of any damages and notate appropriately on the delivery receipt. Keep possession of the damaged piece and contact us via phone or email and we’ll start the process to repair/replace your new piece of furniture. For uShip customer support, please call 800-698-7447.
At Audio Advice, we pride ourselves on customer satisfaction. We'll bend over backward to make sure you're 100% satisfied and we won't accept anything less. We offer 30-day hassle-free returns and personalized service from real, live people.
If an item doesn't meet your expectations, you may return or exchange it in its original condition and packaging within 30 days for a full refund, minus shipping fees. Items shipped back in like new condition through standard shipping carriers will only incur a flat fee of $15 to return. If the items were initially shipped through free scheduled delivery via motor freight (commonly referred to as LTL), returning them will result in return shipping fees starting at $150. These items include but are not limited to, oversized items such as TVs, certain subwoofers, floorstanding speakers, furniture, and most items weighing over 75 pounds. Return fees will also apply for exchanges. We want to treat your system as if it is our own and want you to be completely satisfied with your purchase.
Please see the instructions below. We only accept returns for any product purchased directly from our website. If merchandise is not returned in its original condition or is missing packaging, manuals, accessories or other parts, or the resale value of the product has been impaired, a partial refund will be given and calculated on a case-by-case basis.
Non-Returnable Items
The following items cannot be returned or cancelled:
- Special/Custom Order Items
- Open Box Products
- Gift Cards
- In-ear headphones cannot be returned once the packaging has been opened due to personal hygiene reasons. Please contact our customer care team if you'd like help choosing.
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Turntables With a Broken Stylus: All turntables ship out with the stylus intact. If you return a turntable or phono cartridge with a broken or missing stylus you will be subject to a return fee. Please be careful when setting up your turntable and contact us with any questions.
Is It Easy To Return An Item?
Yes, simply give us a call at 888.899.8776 or you can email our support team at support@audioadvice.com. Many times our team of experts can help figure out why the product might not be working like you expected and get things fixed over the phone, so don’t be surprised if we ask a few questions, we love troubleshooting!
If our tech help can not make you happy, we will email over a return shipping label with a Return Number.
Hopefully, you saved all of the original item’s box and packaging inserts. You will want to pack back up your return or exchange in the same way it came out of the original box. Once you have everything packaged correctly, tape the box on the top and bottom to assure it stays together. If Audio Advice shipped the item to you inside a second box, it's a good idea to use that same extra box to help prevent damage on its way back to us. To avoid it accidentally coming back to you, use a magic marker to cross out the old shipping label or just tear it off.
The return shipping label we send you will have our address on it, just make sure you take the box to the right shipper (UPS, FEDEX, or USPS) as per the label.
If you are close to one of our stores, please let us know if it is more convenient for you to return it to us directly. You will still need to get a return number by contacting us and shipping and/or restocking charges may apply.
When Will I See My Refund?
It usually takes around 7-14 days for the refund to show up on the payment method you used. We do inspect all returns for damage and accuracy of the item inside the box before issuing a refund. Some items may be subject to shipping and restocking fees.
Can I Exchange My Purchase For Something Different?
Sometimes those big speakers just don’t fit in the room or you might have bought a small subwoofer and later found out you’d love a bigger one. If you would like to make an exchange within 30 days of receiving your item, just give us a call at 888.899.8776 or email support@audioadvice.com and we will help work out the details. Additional shipping charges and return costs may apply.
How Do I Cancel An Order?
If the item has already shipped out or is a special order item, it is not possible to cancel the order. Please contact us at 888.899.8776 or email support@audioadvice.com to start the return process.
What If I Find Shipping Damage?
We need to know right away about any shipping damage. Please contact us at 888.899.8776 or email support@audioadvice.com within 48 hours of your delivery so we can get the ball rolling on making things right. It’s very helpful to take some pictures and email them to us if possible.
Can I Refuse A Shipment?
You can, but unless the item is damaged, shipping and restocking fees will be deducted from your refund. If your item arrives damaged and you are lucky enough to be there, snap some quick pics and refuse the order. Then contact us so we can get a replacement on the way.
What Happens If My Order Is Defective?
This is actually pretty rare, most consumer electronics work fine out of the box 99.9% of the time. We’d like for you to contact us first by calling 888.899.8776 or email support@audioadvice.com so we can help get to the bottom of things. If your item is indeed defective during the first 30 days, we can usually exchange it for a new, replacement unit.
What About Service After 30 Days?
Audio Advice has a great relationship with all of our brands and can help you with warranty service by the brand after our 30-day guarantee period. Even after the warranty expires, we can arrange for service by the brand on products purchased from Audio Advice. Just call 888.899.8776 or email support@audioadvice.com.
How Do You Determine A Restocking Fee?
You may not believe it, but sometimes we receive items back that were put in the box with zero packaging and are completely destroyed or are missing many of the pieces that came with the item. We also track serial numbers and will get back different serial numbers. We’ve even seen different items than what we shipped out be returned. However, it’s very important to package your return properly so that nothing goes missing or gets damaged in shipping, which will result in a restocking fee or even no refund at all. If a product is opened and the market value of the product is reduced, then a restocking fee may be applied to the cost of restocking and the reduced market value of the product. The bottom line is if you treat us fairly, we will do the same.
Audio Advice strives to provide industry-leading support and service while also maintaining the lowest prices available on products for our customers. We work hard with our vendors to bring our customers the best products at each price point. As a part of that process, we work with our vendors to provide the lowest pricing in our stores and on our website.
Our prices should always be the same as any other authorized dealer, including big-box retailers and major online retailers.
If you believe that you have found a lower advertised price from a legitimate authorized seller, call us and let us know so we can make sure we can correct any inadvertent error on our side. As a matter of policy, we update our prices automatically if a vendor changes its authorized pricing policies, so we generally have the best prices all the time. Increasingly, there are knock-off copies of products online, usually sold by non-authorized dealers.
Please be sure that the item meets the following conditions:
- The item is brand new, in stock, and available for purchase
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As always, our goal is to provide a terrific customer experience, including industry low prices. We appreciate your support.
Overview
The High Notes
Anthem Room Correction
15.4 Channels with Super Hi-Res DACs
4 Independent Subwoofer Outs and More
Company & Product Overview
Anthem is one of our favorite home theater brands at Audio Advice because their products sound so good for the money and Anthem puts all of their emphasis on giving you the best possible sound and home theater experience.
We were lucky enough to be part of the Anthem beta team to test out and have an advance look at their new products launched in late 2020.
- Anthem AVM 70 & AVM 90 Surround Sound Processors Overview
- New Anthem MRX Home Theater Receivers Overview
- Anthem MCA Gen 2 Amplifiers Overview
Due to a fire at a parts supplier for some of the components in the AVM90, it was delayed. This delay did have a silver lining as Anthem was able to come up with some improvements to make it even better than they originally envisioned. We just got our hands on one of the first models to make it to North America and we have to say - it’s been worth the wait.
Features & Technology
More Channels for Immersive Audio
At Audio Advice, we love immersive home theater audio. When Dolby Atmos and other object-based surround formats came on the scene a few years ago, we were totally thrilled! Dolby Atmos for the home maxed out at 11 channels plus subwoofer(s) until just recently. You can now find 9.4 and even 9.6 Dolby Atmos configurations guides on the Dolby website.
For larger spaces, this is pretty cool as the 8th and 9th lower channels place speakers on the side walls in front of you between your side surround speakers and your left and right front speakers making the soundfield even more seamless! And with 6 Atmos height speakers, the height effects will go to a new level!
Like the earlier released AVM70, the AVM90 has 15 channels of preamp outputs available with either regular RCA or balanced audio connections, but the AVM90 adds even more with the addition of 4 discrete subwoofer outputs.
New Streaming Platform
The streaming platform in the AVM90 includes Chromecast, Airplay2, Bluetooth, Spotify Connect and an upcoming update will add Roon.
Built-In Phono Preamp
Another nice bonus connection is a built-in moving magnet phono preamp. This is no afterthought either as the engineers spent some serious time developing a great moving magnet phono stage. This means the AVM90 is not only a terrific surround sound processor, but also can serve as an outstanding preamp for your music system. In fact, as Apple, Tidal and Amazon roll out music in Atmos, having a surround sound processor double as your music system makes total sense. If you have not experienced Atmos music yet, you are in for a treat. Check out our article listing the top 10 Dolby Atmos songs, play them through your Atmos theater, and you will have a whole new appreciation for great music.
All the Formats
The AVM90 has decoding for Dolby Atmos, DTS:X Pro, and IMAX Enhanced. These are somewhat competing formats for mixing the audio tracks of movies. Dolby Atmos is the most widely adopted and has clear guidance on where to place your speakers. IMAX enhanced uses DTS which can adapt to various speaker layouts. The great news is, no matter how that new movie was mastered or that classic one was remastered, the AVM90 has you totally covered no matter how the soundtrack was produced. And for those of you using a TV capable of Dolby Vision, you will be pleased to know the AVM 90 supports Dolby Vision as well.
8K Ready
The AVM90 comes with HDMI 2.1 full 8K video capabilities built-in. So you can connect all of your sources including 8k sources directly through the AMV90 and then connect the HDMI out to your television or projector. The AVM90 also has e-ARC so you could also use the sources on your television and have it send fully uncompressed object-based surround audio signals back to the AVM90 for processing.
30 Virtual Inputs With Great Lip Sync Capabilities
For inputs, you get 7 HDMI, 3 Toslink digital, 2 Coax Digital, 4 Analog, plus the MM phono preamp. Like the AVM70, the AVM90 also has 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. You basically create a source in the Anthem setup and then assign any HDMI video input and any audio input, whether from that HDMI feed or from any other audio input to the Anthem. As an example, think about watching a sporting event but having the audio tune into the local radio station so you can hear your local announcer. Or you could have a source where you listen to music while simultaneously 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 usually occur when the audio arrives ahead of the video. You see this most often with projectors or when there is substantial video processing slowing down the video.
Another awesome feature that we love is the ability to assign a different lip sync for each input. There’s a 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 AVM90, like a MadVR Envy or Lumigen, you will really need this as video processors add a delay to the video of around 200-250ms before any delay caused by your projector or other display device. In the setup tips and tricks that we send to everyone who purchases their surround processor from Audio Advice, we include a link to our Lip Sync video that will help you dial it in perfectly.
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 happy with the great web interface. All you have to do is 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. For those of you who have your processor in a rack that does not have easy line of sight from your primary listening position, being able to make adjustments wirelessly from laptop is a huge benefit versus most systems that require a direct connection to the processor for calibration and setup.
Anthem Room Correction
ARC Genesis 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. We have been beta testing the new version launching concurrently with the AVM90 and really love its ease of use and new capabilities. It adds even more great features to better phase align subwoofers to main speakers plus sets distances and levels. The result is extremely impressive. In room correction, the quality of the microphone has a big effect on the end result. The AVM90 comes with the same improved microphone as the AVM70. They even designed the microphone to be directional so the dot on the front faces forward just like a moviewatcher faces forward in theater seats. The end result is an even better calibration. The new microphone is a step up from the prior one, looks much beefier, and has a little indicator you will need to point exactly towards the front of the room.
We are most excited about the tech Anthem is using in the new version of ARC Genesis to blend the subwoofers with your speakers. It is pretty easy to use a tape measure to get the distances correct on your main speakers, but nailing subwoofer blending has been a task that can take some work. Most subs add some delay through their built-in digital signal processing and it was a bit of trial and error in the past to get them aligned properly. It makes such a massive difference in the sound that we have made a video just on how to calibrate multiple subs together. ARC Genesis now makes this simple and takes it a step further by looking at the phase response of both your main speakers and your subs to time-align them into one cohesive unit.
Historically, if you wanted more than 2 independent sub outs, you were spending over $20,000 on a processor. The AVM90 has it. This enables your combined sub output to be phase aligned such that you get the best response curve across your seating positions. We can tell you from experience, watching a movie or concert using a system with 4 fine tuned high performance subwoofers is like nothing you have heard before.
In our testing, we connected four subs independently to the AVM90. Once we had everything else connected and ARC Genesis run, our jaws dropped at how much time it saves and how great the bass impact is in the room across all key listening positions. We did find that if you want to go true audiophile-level, you may want to tweak the room gain and deep bass after ARC has run, but we walk you through that in the ARC Genesis Tips & Tricks video.
And speaking of subwoofers, ARC Genesis gives you the option to run your main speakers’ full range and send bass to a subwoofer at the same time for those audiophiles who prefer their left and right speakers to just roll off naturally.
Another thing we like about ARC is the fact it has 4 presets. This means you could set up one room correction for the best sound at your own favorite seat. You could do another that optimized across 2-4 seats for date nights, another for a room full of guests, and another for late-night listening with your subwoofers turned down or off. And along with these 4 ARC presets, they also have full adjustments for level, crossover, and distance for each one. For those of you who geek out on getting the most from your system, this literally has it all.
Audiophile Level DAC's
For the AVM90, Anthem uses very high-end audiophile-level DAC's that work at 32bit/768kHz. This is one of the improvements that came from the delay in the initial shipments of the AVM90. The Anthem engineers had more time to evaluate all of the best DAC’s available. We’ll digress a bit here, but one of our all-time favorite surround sound processors from a pure audio standpoint was the Classe SSP800. It just sounded like a high-end piece of two-channel gear. Interestingly enough, a few of the team at Anthem used to be associated with Classe and had their own personal SSP800’s to compare the test samples they made when developing the revised AVM90. They totally nailed the audio in the AVM90, it sounds much better than our old SSP800 for pure two-channel audio, which is saying a lot. With the AVM90 your sound will be smoother and sweeter with deeper bass extension and a more effortless presentation. If you are considering either the AVM70 or 90 and plan to use your home theater for music listening, you will definitely appreciate the great DAC’s in both of these units, but the AVM90 is a substantial jump up in audio quality.
Overall Recommendation
Anthem processors have always done a fantastic job at spatial imaging. They can locate effects in precise positions with special effects panning across or around the room sounding totally natural. With the better DAC’s and improved power supplies the AVM90 got even better. In our listening test, it could float effects with pinpoint accuracy all over the home theater soundfield.
I know a lot of you watching this are probably considering both the AVM70 and AVM90.
The question comes down to whether the AVM90 is worth the additional cost for your situation than the AVM70? Honestly, for most people, the AVM70 will be a perfect fit and offer excellent sound and spatial imaging in a great home theater. But, if you have the budget and want to get the very best sound and movie experience you will love the AVM90. Now that Apple, Tidal, and Amazon all have Atmos music, the music experience in an Atmos-enabled theater is unparalleled and is only getting better as new music is mastered in Atmos. For those of you who are diehard two-channel fans, check out our videos on the top 10 Atmos movies and music and you’ll experience a whole new level of audio that you never knew existed in the 2-channel world. I’ll admit that some of the remasters are a little hokey, but new music mastered in Atmos correctly will give you goosebumps.
Another scenario where you should choose the AVM90 over the AVM70 is if you have more than 2 subwoofers and want the advantage of ARC Genesis blending them perfectly into your system. Don’t underestimate the difference this can make if you have more than 2 subs!
Finally, if you have the budget and you love great audio and have more than 2 subs, you’d be crazy not to get the AVM90!
If you are trying to decide whether to invest in the AVM90 or not, feel free to give us a call or chat with us at AudioAdvice.com or stop by one of our award-winning showrooms. We’d be happy to help you figure out what is best for your situation. In addition to our price guarantee, we also offer free shipping and lifetime support.
At Audio Advice, we've been designing and installing high-performance home theaters & smart home systems for decades. In fact, we've delivered more custom theaters than anyone in the Southeast! We are now offering Home Theater Design no matter where you live in the United States. If you are interested in a custom home theater or upgrading your current system, give us a call at 888.899.8776, chat with us, or stop by one of our award-winning showrooms.
If you are thinking about building a home theater or updating yours, be sure to check out Home Theater Central, including our free 3D home theater designer where you can design your system, see lots of videos of complete installations, and browse our inspiration gallery and how-to videos.
