Anthem announced at the recent CES trade show the availability of the Audio/Video Master 50v (AVM 50v), a music preamplifier/home theater processor with a built-in tuner and independent source selection for recording. This updated version of the AVM 50 combines strong system connectivity with whole-home audio control.

The Anthem AVM 50v features the latest Sigma Designs* VXP® broadcast-quality digital video processing to ensure deep color while offering improved noise reduction through block artifact and mosquito noise reduction. Two new dual-core audio Digital Signal Processing (DSP) engines, designed in-house by Anthem, offer a total of 800 million instructions per second (MIPS) of processing power to allow decoding of the new Dolby and DTS HD audio standards. Additionally, a free software download for support of Dolby Volume will soon be available via Anthem's website.

In seeking to accommodate the most advanced input formats available, Anthem has upgraded its pulse-code modulation (PCM) input to support 7.1 channels at 24 bits or 192 kHz. Additional HDMI inputs (v.1.3c) have been added, bringing that total to eight, along with two parallel HDMI outputs, enabling the AVM 50v to be the true high-performance hub of any A/V set-up.

Anthem's critically acclaimed Room Correction System (ARC-1™) comes standard with the AVM 50v. While equalizing frequency response in a room to achieve some generic (i.e. "flat") response is a common approach to solving problems with room acoustics, it will result in an unnatural spectral balance, since it does not take into account the human hearing system. ARC-1 is a true audiophile solution: it differs from other systems in that it uses proprietary processing to compute each speaker's in-room frequency response, and then computes a target frequency response for each to yield the optimal sound.

A ship date for the product has yet to be announced.