ARC does produce graphs pre and post room correction. When you first run it, it shows you the pre adjusted measurements. You can then make a bunch of adjustments to influence things before running RC. It’s nice in that sense and very easy to try different things and get immediate feedback on how it sounds. From experience, you can definitely hear differences.
Now, are the graphs truly accurate? No idea! I know for sure that there are tangible differences in how it sounds and bass response in particular in my room, is significantly better (deeper bass, less boomy, more defined) after getting the Anthem and running RC than with the Rotel I had before with no such capabilities. Back then I was just trying to dial the sub in manually as it too was lacking built in RC. Going to the Anthem improved things allot. Going to a different sub even more so, especially for movies.
Is there more on the table as far SQ improvements? Almost certainly. Do I want to go down that rabbit hole to find them? Not sure to be honest. There’s a point where I think it would just get obsessive or too costly and take away from the enjoyment of just watching a movie or listening to music. I’ve no real complaints at this point to be honest. It’s mostly just wants and/or “needs” if something breaks and has to be replaced.
That's all subjective so good for you, but reality is that ARC G is just not effective, vs Audyssey, Dirac Live and probably even YPAO (with the use of the 7 band PEQ). If you frequent the AVSF, Audioholics, and ASR, you won't find too much posted their REW graphs, of the few that you can find/see, you won't see any of them as good as those from posters who used Audyssey and Dirac Live. Gene and Theo mentioned they would fo something as follow up, ie. review ARC G with REW graphs but it still has not happened, I think they might have told us something......
As I mentioned before, ARC G's HMI is excellent, colorful and easy to use, but it is just not capable to deliver better results, and any adjustability provided overall, is restricted to the point an experience user of REQ/C might think they are being treated like little kids who could be trusted.
Just give you one example and you will know what I am getting at, let's say in the deep bass range, you have nasty bump of 9 dB, not too narrow and not too wide at 60 Hz, that someone like
@AcuDefTechGuy would know a single PEQ of -9 dB, Q= 8 would fix it, yet with ARC G, your only option is to play with room gain and deepbass settings, and you are restricted to picking what they called the center frequency, and the dB gain in + or -.
Anyone who know how to use PEQ understands that you need to know the Q value, simply picking the frequency point and the +/- dB gain to EQ would be hit and miss, it might fix something and create another, likely worse than just using the GEQ (or even tone control) that
@William Lemmerhirt just posted above.
To be clear, I like Anthem's AV a lot, and obviously you do too, but I am frustrated that for whatever reasons, many if not most Anthem AVR/AVP users/owners seem to be so trusting/brand loyal to a fault that they just don't/won't push for improvements. I have contacted Anthem support a few time, telling them my issues with ARC G, and were very quick to response but couldn't really offer help other than making sure I knew what I was doing in terms of doing the calibration correctly. At one point, they even admitted there were in fact issues with the software/firmware that would not EQ/RC the deepbass range right, it was supposed to have been corrected in version 80 (by memory only), so I re-did a few more calibration, and found the results were better, to the point it was almost acceptable, but still left wanting. All these can be seen in the graphs I posted.
So again, people, including me, can see anything about how good, or bad, or mediocre about ARC G's current performance, but without supporting, measured performance, it's all anecdotal at best.
We can't see the same about Audyssey and DL, the other two seemingly most popular RC/EQ systems, as there are pretty of REW or similar graphs that are there for anyone who want to see the objective evidence.
I would love to see more Anthem AVR/AVP users to let Anthem know they want improvements, and let them know their perceived deficiencies by sending them their REW graphs. To me, if enough people do that, they will come up with something better when they launch the next upgrade. If they do, it will cost money for sure, but there is also the alternative, to use the paid option, that Masimo has done successfully when they offered the DL upgrade path.
