Why Anthem Powers My Home And Clients' Homes | An A/V Company Owner's Perspective

Why Anthem Powers My Own Home, And Our Clients’ Homes Too

After more than two decades designing and delivering smart homes across Metro Vancouver, the Fraser Valley, and the Sea-to-Sky Corridor, I have learned that great audio is never an accident. It is the result of careful planning, solid infrastructure, and choosing components that simply do their job, day in and day out.

For Graytek, when it comes to amplification and processing, that partner is Anthem. It is the same brand I trust in my own home, and the same brand we rely on across our projects, from multi-room music systems to dedicated reference theatre rooms.

The simple rule I use for every brand

As the owner and founder of Graytek, I have a very simple rule. If I am not comfortable using a brand in my own home, I am not going to install it in yours. Anthem passes that test easily.

Our clients expect systems that feel effortless, day after day. They do not see the racks, the wiring, or the programming. They just expect their music, movies, and sports to sound right every time they tap a scene or choose a source. For that to happen, the gear behind the scenes has to be powerful, stable, and predictable.

Anthem has proven that it can do that in real homes, with real families, over many years. It gives us the consistency we need from room to room and project to project, which is critical when you are supporting luxury homes across Vancouver, West Vancouver, North Vancouver, Whistler, and beyond.

There is also something special about partnering with a Canadian company that cares deeply about engineering and customer experience. As a Canadian integrator, it matters to me that Anthem is designed and supported here at home. On the rare occasions we need support, the response we receive is excellent. Questions get answered, issues get resolved, and we feel like we are working with a team that genuinely wants our projects to succeed. That confidence flows directly to our clients, because we know the equipment we are installing is backed by people who stand behind it.

In our world, reliability is not a nice-to-have. When you are building complex systems into custom homes, a failure is not just an inconvenience. It can disrupt a family’s daily life or a key event they are hosting. Anthem products have proven to be extremely dependable in the field, which means fewer service calls, happier clients, and systems that simply work the way they are supposed to.

Canadian powered, and proudly so.

How Anthem performs in real homes

When you work with Graytek on a project in Metro Vancouver, the Fraser Valley, or the Sea-to-Sky Corridor, you benefit from how well we know Anthem in the real world. We have seen how it behaves in a wide variety of homes, with different speaker layouts, acoustics, and usage patterns.

In a multi-room system, Anthem lets us deliver consistent sound quality across dozens of speakers without sacrificing control or clarity. Kitchens, great rooms, and outdoor living areas can all be part of one cohesive experience, with enough headroom to keep the sound clean even when the volume comes up.

In lifestyle media rooms and dedicated theatres, Anthem gives us the dynamic range, processing power, and fine-tuning tools that serious movie and music lovers expect. These are rooms that need to handle everything from family movie nights to playoff hockey, gaming, and focused listening sessions. Anthem gives us the flexibility to design for all of those scenarios, without making the system complicated for the family to use.

From a design-first perspective, Anthem also fits perfectly with how we build homes. We centralise equipment in properly ventilated racks, keep the rooms clean and uncluttered, and use structured wiring and solid networking to tie everything together. Anthem slots into that foundation smoothly, which keeps the system neat, serviceable, and future-ready.

Most importantly, our clients get systems that feel effortless. You tap a scene or choose a source, and the audio simply sounds right, whether you are enjoying background music in the kitchen, focused listening in a study, or full cinematic impact in a dedicated theatre.

How I use Anthem in my own home

To understand why I trust Anthem so much, it helps to look at how I use it myself. These are not theoretical examples. They are the exact products and configurations I live with, listen to, and rely on every single day.

In my home office, I run an Anthem STR 2-channel system that I listen to daily. For anyone interested in the platform, you can see the STR Integrated Amplifier here.

This is my personal listening space, where I sit down with music that matters to me and want to hear every detail. The STR delivers the kind of control, refinement, and musicality that keeps me in the chair longer than I probably should be. It is Anthem powered, and I would not have it any other way.

Our family room and den serve as our lifestyle media space. This is where we watch movies, stream shows, and gather around for hockey games. That room is anchored by an Anthem MRX 1140 8K receiver, which has the horsepower to drive our speakers properly, the flexibility to handle every source we throw at it, and the reliability that lets my family use it without thinking about what is behind the scenes.

We also have a dedicated high performance home theatre that is built to the same reference standard we deliver for our clients. In that room, an Anthem AVM 90 processor and three MCA 525 GEN 2 amplifiers power 15 Atmos channels. You can explore the AVM 8K Series processors and MCA GEN 2 multichannel amplifiers to see the platform we rely on in that room.

Then there is the part of the home that sees the most daily use, our kitchen and great room. In that area we have five pairs of in-ceiling speakers and two in-wall subwoofers, all powered by a dedicated Anthem MDX-16. As mentioned earlier, the MDX Series overview shows how this platform scales across a whole home.

It provides clean, even coverage for background music while we cook or entertain, yet has enough headroom to make the space come alive when we turn it up. The entire area feels connected and balanced, because the amplification is built to handle real-world use.

The Anthem lineup we rely on

Once you understand why I rely on Anthem, it is easier to see how their lineup fits into different types of projects.

For multi-room audio distribution, we lean on Anthem’s MDX line. In many of our projects, the MDX-16 becomes the engine that quietly powers a whole home of in-ceiling speakers and architectural subwoofers from a central rack. You can explore the MDX Series to see how it scales across a home.

For lifestyle media rooms and family spaces, we use Anthem’s MRX line of receivers almost exclusively. These rooms need to handle everything from casual streaming to big movie nights and sports. The MRX Series gives us performance that satisfies the home theatre enthusiast, while remaining simple enough for everyone in the family to enjoy.

When we step into higher end, dedicated theatre environments, we turn to Anthem’s AVM 90 and AVM 70 8K processors, usually paired with MCA GEN 2 and P Series separate amplifiers. These spaces often involve custom acoustics, large projection screens, and carefully tuned speaker layouts. The AVM platform with MCA GEN 2 and P Series amplification gives us the flexibility and performance we need to deliver truly immersive, cinema-grade experiences.

For two channel and focused listening, we look to the STR platform. In my own home office, the STR Integrated Amplifier is the centre of my system, but the same philosophy carries into the way we design high performance audio rooms for our clients. Control, refinement, and musicality are non-negotiable in those spaces. You can explore the STR Integrated Amplifier in more detail on Anthem’s site.

Across all of these applications, what matters most to me is that Anthem products are powerful, reliable, and sound fantastic. They give us consistency from room to room and project to project, and they integrate cleanly into the design-first approach that defines our work.

Explore what is possible with Graytek

If you would like to learn more about the brands we trust and specify on projects across Metro Vancouver, the Fraser Valley, and the Sea-to-Sky Corridor, you can start here.

If you are starting to think about a dedicated home theatre or a high performance media room, you can explore some of our solutions here.

Canadian powered, every day

We believe in Anthem so strongly because we experience it daily, in our own homes and in our clients’ homes across Vancouver, West Vancouver, North Vancouver, Whistler, and the surrounding communities. The performance is solid, the reliability is proven, and the support is exactly what we look for in a long-term partner.

As the owner and founder of Graytek, I am comfortable putting my name behind Anthem. It is Canadian powered, it sounds exceptional, and it gives us the confidence to design systems that we know will stand the test of time.

If you are planning a new custom home or looking to upgrade your existing media room or whole-home audio, and you want a solution that blends performance, reliability, and thoughtful design, Anthem is at the top of my list. And when we install it for you, it is because I trust it enough to use it myself.

Blog by James Gray
Owner/Founder Graytek