Thank you all for the great input. As many of you said, I was probably experiencing clipping from the amp and as Alan said it's probably why the receiver got very hot.
A xxx Watt amp will cause distortion in any speaker if it is driven to try and produce loudness levels that it wasn't designed to do. This is a limitation of the amp, not necessarily the speaker as the amp begins to clip when it's pushed too far and this clipping from the amp can actually damage your speakers.
Thanks, I didn't know that, I always thought it was the opposite, that you could damage the speaker if giving them more power than what they are rated for. Now let's say if a 100W amp is able to provide let's say 100dB without clipping, is it correct to say that a 400W amp would only be able to provide 106dB without clipping?
Consider "0 dB" on your volume readout as a rough guideline that you should not exceed, or if you do, you may risk "clipping" the output stage or incurring increasing distortion that may become audible.
It might have been a good idea for the Receiver manufacturer to limit it to 0dB if they cannot handle more to avoid ignorant people like me damaging their speakers.
I know you do not have an SPL meter (measures dB basically) but those speakers at + anything must be ridiculously loud.
Indeed it was
. It would have probably been bearable in a room 3x my size. Usually, the loudest that I will have it on will be -10dB and not for too long as it is already very loud.
