Looking for New AV Processor

@SOIX

Good question on cables. Speaker cables are Audioquest, but I can't for the life of me remember the exact name / spec, they are bi-amping capable with 8 wires per cable. The interconnects are XLR Morrow MA3's for the front and MA2's for the surround channels. I'm not currently bi-amping, should I? Previous advice suggested no.

My current Sub is located front middle (mostly due to having four cats) and I've added a little gain, but adding a second sub is a good idea, the SV1 is quite musical and nimble but is maybe lacking oomph and maybe needs a big brother.

If you were looking at one of the Marantz Cinema units that supports Dirac, it'd be a no brainer.  I went from an Anthem MRX1140 to a Marantz AV 20 with the full Dirac suite including ART and there's no comparison. Night and day better than Anthem with ARC Genesis.  However, $$$.  Dirac is an add-on that's not cheap.  So if we're comparing Marantz with Audyssey and Anthem with ARC Genesis, I'd go with Anthem. IME, I think ARC Genesis does a better job than Audyssey.

I use a Technics AH-SH500D Here’s a Link on ebay there are a bunch. Get one with a remote. Cheap and works and sounds very well Does Dolby/ and Stereo and DTS, Look for the specs on the web..Here’s eBay.

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=tecnics+AH-SH500d&_sacat=0&_from=R40&_trksid=p4624852.m570.l1313

+1 Marantz

Or,

While you have the system somewhat torn apart and since you didn't mention the size of your room, demo a quality 2 channel integrated amp with sub out.  5.1 speakers are a big challenge to setup and integrate properly, even today.  I ditched surround years ago and have been 2 channel since for my main AV room.  I like my Atoll IN 200 evo with optional DA100 DAC board with my ProAc studio 148s.  You might surprised what you get with a quality integrated amp with your two main speakers setup well.  The Atoll is one of the few integrated amps made today that have a tape loop.  I use it for equalizing some difficult / harsh AV tracks with a Cardas Iridium cable in the defeatable loop.

@crnkit - Not that I have a need to be validated, but if you are asking if I'd talked to them, yes, and they pretty much agreed that it has these issues.

First, a little terminology.  Dolby Surround specifically means 2 to 4 channel matrix decoding/encoding.  It is the brand used in motion picture auditoriums, and was for a while also called Dolby Pro-Logic in homes.  Not sure if the PL label still applies. 

I've also had help from those with better tools than I at DIYaudio.  Every processor I've had in the past let me enable Dolby Surround regardless of the stream's encoding.  So long as it was at least a 2 channel source, I could enable the DS part. 

Anthem DOES NOT. 

All Netflix 2 channel streams are tagged Dolby Digital 2.0 and for whatever reason marked as non-DS.  

Here's the thing.  Anthem still shows "Dolby Surround" on the screen, but the center and surround are not working.  One weird way to test this is with Anime that you can compare to Crunchyroll.  CR's streams are PCM however, not DD 2.0 and as such Anthem DOES use the DS decoding.  

Depending on how you look at it, either Anthem is being very strict about adhering to the rules, and then the bug is that it displays Dolby Surround when it should not, or it's a bug that it's not enabling DS even when you've told it to, AND saying it did. 

Also, and this is a nit, this is an electrically noisy receiver.  I think even with it "off" it still has enough noise in the outputs to keep my external amps from sleeping.  I had to adjust the amp sensitivity considerably.