Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Emotiva amps

I have 2 M22s, VP150, 2QS8s and 2 HSU horns in back and a SVS cylinder sub

You can't use amps, unless you have a preamp or a receiver acting as a preamp. My guess is a receiver alone would be fine, is this a new Sherwood? If so, it would be under warranty if it is new.

Of I remember, your room is not huge, so any decent receiver should be fine. Most people go with extra amps to drive speakers like the m80's, you will never need gobs of power for the rear channels in my opinion.

It is possible that your wiring is shorted. If it is running "under" stuff, how can you be sure that is not the problem.

Run some extra wiring above the flooring to the speakers and see if you have the same problem...

In my opinion a pre-pro/amp combo is not needed. Especially one costing $1500-$2000 to drive M22's. I am still suspicious if the receiver you own is actually faulty since it only shuts down in 7.1 mode. I still think it is plausable that there could be a problem with your speaker wire leading to your newly installed surround speakers. I am not at all familiar with the HSU horn speakers though. If your receiver is indeed found to be defective and you have some money to spend you should consider a mid-upper end Denon receiver and if you have money left over after that spend it on another subwoofer over amplification.

Guy, I share the Doc's thought that it's less likely to be the fault of the Sherwood. It would be unusual to have difficulty running the back surrounds if wiring is proper and if there isn't an internal short in a back surround speaker. Re-check the wiring and switch other speakers back there to see if it's a wiring or speaker problem instead.

What JohnK said.

I would get the rear channels out of the equation and see how things work, if it doesn't have any issues then the problem must be with one or both of the speakers used in the rear channels. My old Denon 1804 stated the rear channels needed to be a minimum of 16 ohm as the rear channel(s) was split on one amp so dual 8 ohm speakers in parralel would have been around 4 ohm and could have possibly caused it to shut down, luckily it never did with a single 6 ohm QS8 on the circuit.

Well, he said that Sherwood said it was a known issue. However, I'd probably go with a Denon as well, maybe a nice 2 channel amp along with it if you really felt like it.

Here is a thread about some of the Sherwood issues.

http://www.remotecentral.com/cgi-bin/mboard/rc-custom/thread.cgi?16326

I also copy and pasted this from the Sherwood website FAQ about troubleshooting shut down issues.

There are many reasons why a receiver will shut down unexpectedly. The first thing to check is the speaker wiring. Make sure the speaker wires are not shorted out (touching each other). You should check the speaker wiring to be absolutely sure the wiring is correct. If the wiring is correct you should power down the receiver and completely disconnect ALL the speaker wires. Then turn the receiver ON, without any speakers connected, to see if the receiver continues to shut down.

If it continues to shut down there could be damage internally. If it remains on (this is usually a good sign) turn the volume up to about half way and connect one speaker at a time until the receiver shuts down again. You can single out which speaker is causing the problem at which point you should repair or replace the problem speaker/speaker wire.

From the linked thread it doesn't sound like a lot of installers are having problems, especially since one of his shut down issues was installer error - staples through the speaker wires.

Yeah. Since the surround back is causing problems and are bookshelves which do not need to be wall mounted. All you would need is like 5 feet of wire for each speaker. Placement of the HSU horns does not matter during the test since it is just a matter of seeing if the receiver will shut down again in 7.1 mode with different wire.

Well a friend of mine brought over his 10 gauge speaker wire and it shut down after a couple of minutes with the back speakers turned on. it runs fine with the back speakers turned off though. So it looks like I am sending this unit back it is under warranty but I still am going to buy a new one. So if you had $2000 what would you buy for an AV to power your 7.1? I guess I dont care if its seperates or not I just want the best for my money. Im thinking Denon or Integra but would like the forums input. Thanks