Introduction

In Part 1 of Flagship Home Theater, I covered the video side with Anthem’s LTX-500 LCoS 1080p projector and the Black Diamond II screen from SI Screens.  Now let’s look at the other half of the home theater equation: the sound.  To round out my Flagship Home Theater experience, I tested the Anthem Statement D2v A/V Processor and A5 five-channel power amplifier.

When looking for reliable advice on the purchase of home theater components, the one rule that is always stated is to budget twice as much money for audio as for video.  In practice, this is very hard to do.  We all want the biggest display possible and those extra inches cost a lot of extra dollars.  Often there isn’t much left of the original budget for audio so we settle for gear that’s somewhat below state-of-the-art.

I broke this rule with my first system but since then have had the chance to right the wrong.  When I was able to invest real money in audio, my home theater experience skyrocketed to an entirely new level.  I truly re-discovered my movie collection as all those old familiar titles took on a whole new dimension.  A big display is great and perhaps even essential but good sound can create such immersion and intimacy with the film that you’ll wonder how you watched movies before.

The home theater package Anthem sent me included their top-of-the-line processor, the Statement D2v and the 180 watt-per-channel A5 amplifier.  These components, like the LTX-500 projector are no-compromise designs.  The engineering and components that go into these products are truly state-of-the-art.  The D2v is the ultimate hub for a home theater system.  Boasting the Sigma Designs VXP (formerly Gennum VXP) video processing solution, support for the latest audio codecs on Blu-ray disc and three-zone operation, its capabilities are tremendous for both analog and digital sources.  The A5 is also a high-end design with five channels of amplification, an extremely low noise floor and plenty of smooth clean power to drive whatever loudspeakers you care to connect it to.