I've been pretty happy with my Emotiva gear. I've had a LPA-1 7 channel amp powering my whole system for almost 2 years now, and it's been a solid amp. It was $499 and it drives my M80's (and the rest of my system) perfectly with no problems what-so-ever. No problems with heat or spontaneous shutdowns. I did have one of their LMC-1's (prepro) for a while but ended up returning for a refund due to buggy software.
My overall experience with Emotiva has been positive. I am probably going to buy their new UMC-1 prepro when it's eventually released. But I'm fully intending to use their return policy if it doesn't live up to my high expectations.
But as others have mentioned, there's more to the story. Several highly-respected people here have had problems with Emotiva's 'high-end' amps and M80's. It's been reported that there's definitely a bit of the 'blame game' going on, with Emotiva claiming that M80's have substantial impedance dips. And us loyal Axiom-ites claiming this is untrue, since no other amps seem to have problems with M80's and there are some unconfirmed (to me) reports of people with other 4-ohm speakers (Rockets) having problems with Emotiva amps too.
My advice would be that if Emotiva has an amp that meets your performance criteria and you're genuinely interested in it, you might as well order one to try. If it doesn't work for you, Emotiva has a no questions asked return policy.
Or if you want to bypass the 'what-if' questions entirely, just buy an Axiom A1400-8.
