Send them back. Or, that is what I’d do – if you care. I’ll say it one more time. It is irrelevant how much power your amps are outputting or if it’s loud enough for you or your friends or your neighbors. They are not supplying maximum available current without shutting down. This should not be happening. They claim to be rated for a 4 ohm load, so they should be able to carry the load without shutting down. It just doesn’t get any simpler than that. You praise Emotiva for working with you. Well, they should be. Their product is not performing as it should. They just don’t have that many customers with a set of speakers to push their amps to their limit, or are willing to give it a try if they do own them. You have the speakers and you are giving their amps a heck of a work out. How many other M80 owners actually push them this hard??? Not that many, if any. It’s just too loud and probably scares the hell out of most sane individuals that are not experiencing sever hearing loss.

For comparison’s sake (only because I know you like comparisons), when I had my M80’s in my great room powered with my Rotel RB 1080, I could pin the volume to max for as long as I wanted and it would not go into over current or clipping. (Granted, it wasn’t all that long as it was simply too friggin loud for me and my neighbors.) When I moved the 80’s to the theater room and bought some Wharfedale Opus 2’s for this system, I can still pin the volume for as long as I like without shutting the amp down or clipping. The Opus 2’s are a 6 ohm speaker not nearly as efficient as the 80’s, but with much larger drivers. In other words, they have comparable current requirements even though the resistance is higher.

My great room is 28 X 32 with a vaulted, 23’ ceiling peak and 10’ walls. Much more cubic space than your room.

My Axioms are now being powered by a lil ol’ Marantz receiver with a measly 125 wpc / 8 ohm. Twin M22’s as a center (4 ohm) and the M80’s across the front. Q8’s all around the back. Same thing as when the Rotel was driving them……volume pinned and no shut down and no clipping. And this is just single amp with six taps for the channels.

My past three HK’s (745, 7300, 7200) exhibited the same qualities……no clipping or shut down with the volume pinned.

Your Emotiva is defective. I don’t care what sales pitch they throw at you or how you or anyone else tries to rationalize it, it should not be shutting down. If you’re “over driving” them now with the volume at around 90%, what will the threshold be in a year?? 80%, 70%??

Emotiva’s look like one heck of a bargain and they sound like a great company to work with. But they are young and their product will have some growing pains until they get the bugs worked out. I’m sure that if you are patient, and they are open to the possibility that they have a problem here, you may be OK in the end, if you decide to keep it. If they continue to come up with excuses trying to convince you that the problem is your speakers and not their amps, I’d not hesitate to ask for my money back.

Why don't you send Alan an email and get his opinion? He's gone through this numerous times already trying to smoke amps / receivers to see if they will drive Axiom products.