Anthem AVM60 vs the D1
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| Below, the Statement D1, the Cadillac of analog pre/pros |
I'm a McIntosh man. I went down the Japanese electronics path first, with Sansui, Technics, Sony and finally Rotel, and had no end of trouble, odd buzzes, hums, sound distortion, failures, which meant an endless cycle of replacements, upgrades and trips to the repair shop. With the cheap parts and thin/bad soldering on the boards, you're lucky if this gear even works right when it's new. Especially Sony, they have planned obsolescence down to an art, 2-3 years and you need to throw it out and buy a new one.
The final Sony product I bought was their highest end cassette deck, with a 90 day warranty, on the 91st day the front panel went out.
Except for Rotel. I don't have a bad word to say about Rotel, I bought the RSP 980 THX Surround Processor and never had any problems with it. Other than it was now surrounded entirely by McIntosh gear, all my amps, speakers, even the Mac Laserdisc player. Only component I had that wasn't Mac was the Dennon DVD-2200S DVD-Audio/SACD player, because Mac didn't make a DVD-A player. And true to Japanese engineering, the tray door stopped working within 2-3 years So I figured my next upgrade would be replace the Rotel with the Mac pre/processor that could handle component 1080i video from my new D-VHS player.
At the local Hi-Fi shop I was considering taking home the McIntosh MX135. Beside it was another A/V processor made by Anthem, the Statement D1. The D1 was feature to feature, spec to spec, exactly the same as the MX135. Build quality, internal component, workmanship, all the same, Anthem built a unit to go head to head with McIntosh with no compromise. Which made it a tough decision for me and many repeat visits to the shop to have another listen, test features out. In the end I preferred the D1. Not because it was cheaper, because I liked it better. The greater number of front panel hard buttons made it faster to switch modes and inputs, and it had a couple more sound modes than the Mac did. In the end, I wanted the highest quality audio, and I saw no reason to pay Mac 50% more when I could get the Anthem that I was perfectly happy with. Even at the same price, the Anthem was the winner.
Now after 15 years of flawless use of the D1, I'm upgrading to the AVM60 for the HDMI features. I had HDMI sound input to the D1 via an external box which separated HDMI audio into 8 channel RCA audio (first via the Ambery AU-HDLB1 and then Essence Evolve II-4K). I was looking at some other HDMI 7.1 audio boxes but with Anthem having a 20% off sale, I decided to upgrade. The D1 will go to another room where I'll build another sound system someday.
Couple of install quirks with AVM60. First, the app died. After 2 hours of debugging it turn out the AVM60 was at fault. Wired and wireless networking was "down", no lights on the ethernet interface. Even a firmware upgrade didn't fix the problem. However, unplugging the wall power for a few minutes did fix the problem.
Firmware upgrade, it can only be done via USB stick and only via the front panel port (behind the little door), doesn't work via the rear USB port, and my stick was too big to plug all the way into the front port, so I had to get another stick. Works fine under Linux, just download the zip file, unzip and copy the .fw file to a FAT USB stick. You could download on your phone and put it on a stick if you wanted to.
Difference between the two units, first sound quality! There isn't any real noticeable difference, with different ARC setting one could spend a lot of time trying to tell these units apart based on sound quality.
At the local Hi-Fi shop I was considering taking home the McIntosh MX135. Beside it was another A/V processor made by Anthem, the Statement D1. The D1 was feature to feature, spec to spec, exactly the same as the MX135. Build quality, internal component, workmanship, all the same, Anthem built a unit to go head to head with McIntosh with no compromise. Which made it a tough decision for me and many repeat visits to the shop to have another listen, test features out. In the end I preferred the D1. Not because it was cheaper, because I liked it better. The greater number of front panel hard buttons made it faster to switch modes and inputs, and it had a couple more sound modes than the Mac did. In the end, I wanted the highest quality audio, and I saw no reason to pay Mac 50% more when I could get the Anthem that I was perfectly happy with. Even at the same price, the Anthem was the winner.
Now after 15 years of flawless use of the D1, I'm upgrading to the AVM60 for the HDMI features. I had HDMI sound input to the D1 via an external box which separated HDMI audio into 8 channel RCA audio (first via the Ambery AU-HDLB1 and then Essence Evolve II-4K). I was looking at some other HDMI 7.1 audio boxes but with Anthem having a 20% off sale, I decided to upgrade. The D1 will go to another room where I'll build another sound system someday.
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| The D1 (bottom) has over 100 inputs |
Couple of install quirks with AVM60. First, the app died. After 2 hours of debugging it turn out the AVM60 was at fault. Wired and wireless networking was "down", no lights on the ethernet interface. Even a firmware upgrade didn't fix the problem. However, unplugging the wall power for a few minutes did fix the problem.
Firmware upgrade, it can only be done via USB stick and only via the front panel port (behind the little door), doesn't work via the rear USB port, and my stick was too big to plug all the way into the front port, so I had to get another stick. Works fine under Linux, just download the zip file, unzip and copy the .fw file to a FAT USB stick. You could download on your phone and put it on a stick if you wanted to.
Difference between the D1 and AVM60
Difference between the two units, first sound quality! There isn't any real noticeable difference, with different ARC setting one could spend a lot of time trying to tell these units apart based on sound quality.
The D1 has:
Legacy video switching, S-Video, component video, composite video.
Balanced inputs for stereo and digital.
Balanced inputs for stereo and digital.
3 trigger outputs.
IR outputs.
8 RCA digital inputs.
6 channel RCA audio inputs (the most important feature).
The AVM60 has:
7 HDMI inputs.
13 audio outputs.
Networking, Android app.
Dolby Atmos.
Even though the D1 doesn't have HDMI, you can still use HDMI devices with it, by use using a device like the Essence Evolve II-4K which send the HDMI picture to the monitor and HDMI sound to the 6 channel input on the D1.
People have asked how much are you going to sell the D1 for now that you have the AVM60. I'm not. The D1 is priceless, best analog pre/pro ever made, I plan to build another listening room around it.
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