D2v vs Classe ssp800, which would you prefer?

I briefly heard some Classe equip (2 ch? ...multi ch?) playing stereo music at a CES demo in the Venetian this past week. I wasn't there for the equipment, and briefly ran in and out of the room to get to the next stop on my list. What I did remember, besides what exactly I was listening to, was how refined and "hi-end" sounding the setup was, and what was coming out of the system, and was nicely assured of the prowess of what Classe still offers in electronics! Yes, the sound was overall superb.
I presume the same passion level of excellence would be meticulously passed on to the hi-end only company's other products, regardless, no doubt! That said, the assumption is that you will be treated to no less when it came to high end sound reproduction from the SSP800, yes?!
My presumption (only mine) is that a safe bet would be that the Classe likely trumps the potential of the Anthem, all things equal and considered.

I wish the Classe had auto room correction built in like the Anthem! ARC makes such a big improvement to my system. I would like to try the Classe, but I don't think that I would want to live without ARC!

I guess I also don't have any real complaints about the audio quality with the D2/ARC. It sounds pretty damn good actually.

I do consulting in sound and vision. I had many stereo highend systems. I did now have surround because the quality was not good enough want I wanted. Until roomcorrection. It breings surround to a level which I am happy with. Without it I would not want surround even for free. Wenn you have highend systems 3 dimensional sound is a pre, or you miss an important part in realistic sound. That was the reason why I sold my Nautilus 800S. B&W is very poor in 3d imaging. Wenn you want to go further in quality you have to stop with some brands. Classe is a brand what is very capable of depth. But without roomcorrection you never get that level which is superior. In the past I owned the Pass Labs XA100.5 and XP-20. Now I use the Pass labs X250.0 and Onkyo PR-SC5509. The grazy thing is; I have an extreem 3d image even with stereo. Onkyo ( Integra) is the only brand which can play deep behind the speakers. Brand like Arcam, Marantz, Denon are all 2 dimensional. I sold these brands for many years and I tested them many times. For me it is as simple as 1 and 1 is 2 what it is capable for in quality and properties. With Audessey Pro I got a level what I never thought it would be possible in surround. Focus on instruments and how clear a voice sounds go's more easily than wenn I used the XP-20. There is one limitation. You need to know a lot about sound to use Audessey pro. For most consumers it is not an easy system to use. I measure at different hights than Audessey does. But at the end I get an higher level in quality they get. Wenn I play stereo my sub is fully stealth with the other speakers. These days I set my sub to 120hz. This sets everything to an higher level. You need a subwoofer without bass reflex system and a big speaker unit only on the front side. Alle other kinds of subs I tested all failled in tests to become fyll stealth. I hate wenn a sub is to slow and not fully stealth. Most subs you can throw in the garbage bag. Only with a good roomcorrection system like Audessey pro your speakers incl. sub become one. Wenn you do not use this you always can easily hear the flaw's. For me it is perfect sound or nothing. There is never a solution in between.

I had the Anthem D2 with ARC and it was very good. But the Classe SSP-800 surpasses it by quite a bit. And using the XTZ Pro II room analyzer with
Classe's manual EQ I think I got even better results than with the ARC.

Definitely the 800 w/ XTZ pro. Heard both a few times.
Also heard the MX150..be glad you can't afford it...IMHO.
In the 150's price range look at used Theta Casa'2 w/ at least one Extreme card and HDMI upgrade to level 3.