Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Outlaws & Five M80's Conclusion (long post)

I will try to explain the Outlaw problem with my five M80's and QS8's, I do want to make it clear that I was very impessed with the 950/770 combo, and I do think it was perhaps just an issue on the 770 that I happened to get. Here is the problem, the left rear channel amp would go into thermo protection, within 20 minutes, it did not matter what type of sound was playing, or if it was in 5.1 or 6.1 or 7.1, the only factor that seems to cause it is the volume level.
When the 950/770 arrived, it was connected to the front M80's, VP150, QS8's, the system was used daily, with differant listening levles, but mostly at the - 20 db on the 950 display. The 950/700 was stacked, but it was on the marble tile floor, no pad or carpet under the 770, and it was in that position for almost a week as I changed and tweaked with cables and other things. The Outlaws performed flawlessly, and I was a very happy camper with them.
Since 770 was making the M80's sound great, I decided to go ahead and push the budget and add the M80's for the rear channel, this was always in the plan, but not for a few months because of budget. So I emailed Amie and asked her to send another pair of the M80's to add to the family, as ususal within 4 days they arrived, as soon as they were in the door, I put them in place, ran temporary wires to them, I also had ordered 300' of the Axiom 12 ga speaker wire, as I had been using 14 ga on the old speaker system, and becasue of the lenght of runs for the rears, I now had 195' of new wires to pull through the 12" high floor space of the second floor for the rear M80's and the QS8's.
So with new wiring laying on the floor to all 7 speakers, I fired up the Outlaws, and proceded to realx and listen to the new speaker addition, volume at the usual -20 db, the heck with the wire mess, just wanted to listen to tuns. By this time, my roomies were home, and well haiving dinner, watched a few movies and the system was working great.
The next morning I set about to run the new wires, had the system on and since it was sounding great, turned the volume up, set it at -15, and went to work on the wires. Well.....about 20 minutes later, I hear a pop out of the left rear M80, turend the volume down and went to investigate, no longer a happy camper, my less than 24 hour brand new M80 is dead, no sound at all..........panic time, I runs to call for help......Axiom, on phone, hearing they never have an M80 die.
Well talking to Joe, I'm madly checking wiring, connections, and then I hear another pop, wow, the M80 is reborn. Happily say bye to Joe, turn the volume back up, off to works I go. Well.......20 minutes later, pop, no more M80 once again, this time I wake up and figure its the amp, do a test tone, and sure enough, no left rear amp, so I think okay, maybe with the addion of the rear speakers, the amp is wanting more cooling, shut the system down, put the 950 and the 770 back to back on the floor, and when the thermo protector pops back alive, re-power the system and go back to wiring. I was expecting some calls, so was just ruinning at the -20 db level.
That evening when roomies get home, they are anxious to hear the new speaker addition, run the volume up to the -15 db, now three happy campers, but only for about 20 minutes, can hear that now to fermiliar pop, left rear amp cuts out once again.......to late to call Outlaw, eat, go to bed not happy at all.
Next morning on the phone at 6am (PST) to talk to a tech, talk to Scott, he tells me the 770 is bullet proof, has never had a 770 thermo protector kick in, insists it has to be one of the new M80's are defective, wants me to talk to Axiom. Off the phone, and I call, lines busy, left a message. As I was out running errands, roomie gets a call and when I return, he hands me a number and says some one named Alan called, I stare at him and why he did not transfer the call to my cell. <g> Not all a bad thing, now I have Alans direct number, I call Alan and have a long chat with him, and he assures me M80's don't arrive defective, some where in here I had already changed speakers out, exchanged the left rear with a front M80, and the problem was still happening.
It was getting close to the weekend, had about 20 friends shwoing up for an auditioning party, spent the next few days concealing wires and putting the system back together. Also had ordered another M80 to replace the VP150. Party went well, lots of comments on the Axioms, and just kept the volume at - 20db and above, no problems at all.
Some time the following week the M80 arrives, I take down the VP150, and set the M80 in its new home, fire up the Outlaws, set the volume at - 20 db, and give a listen to the great sound of the new center channel, after an hour or so, increase the volume to -18, to avoid that -15 problem..........20 minutes later, I loose the left rear channel again, this just suks, on the phone to Outlaw, this time talking to Steve, explain the whole ting in detail, he tells me the 770 is bullet proof, they have never heard of a thermo protector kicking in, it has to be my M80's and wires, could I change speakers out, try all of them in the left rear position, check wires, was I using banana plugs, if not, install them to assure no shorts.....come on tech, give me some credit, with a brand new $8k system, I'm sure not going to be so careless as to not make sure when connecting speaker wire not to caue a ground....but okay, I will do as you ask.
Off to Best Buy, waste $ 74 on 28 AR banana plugs, spend the time to install all of them, use Fluke meter one again to check all of my 300' of wire. Fire up the system, set the volume to the by now hated - 15 level, wait 20 minutes........yup, there goes the left rear channel, do this for the next 100 minutes, changing out the M80 every time the channel cuts out.
After a few days of trying differant speaker/wire locations, call Steve back, this time he wants be to put the 950-770 back to back, and change out the seven Outlaw interconnects, to see if one of them is defective. Keep in mind, each test take 20 minutes, even got to the point of using a stop watch I have, and it was within a minute or so of taking 20 minutes for the thermo to kick in every time.
Call back and talk to Steve again reporting that the interconnects were not the issue, and also now that I had added the M80 for a center channel, the thermo was kicking in not at the - 15 level, but now as high as - 18, so from what I was seeing, the probelm was getting worse, not better. This was the wrong thing to point out, becasue he then wants to know if I have talked to Axiom to see if the M80 could be increasing a way to much form the 4 ohm rating, and thus, my five M80's were maxing out the 300 watts x 7@ 4 ohm rating. So I had another long chat with Alan, and this is when I decided to start doing some testing with the only tool I had, the Fluke multimeter.
I did days of testing with the meter, put every one of the seven speakers on the problem channel, no matter which speaker was connected to the problem channel, it always cut out within the 20 minutes, even the center M80 that only has a 3' length of 12 ga wire. More conversations with Steve, re-doing things he had already had me do in the past weeks, and constantly resorting back to the M80's and speaker wire lenghts. So this week he decided to call the factory to see if they had any clue as to waht was happening and said he would call back.
So that aftenoon/evening after talking to him and Alan once again, I decided to just run temp wires on the floor, moved the rear speakers so they were only 18 feet from the amp, now all 7 speakers had less than 1' of 12 ga, set the level at -15 and ran a test cd for 48 mins, once again, the left rear channel drops out at 20 minutes. Well doing this test, I decdied to try one thing I had not done, since the problem channel amp is in the center of the 770, switched in interconnets around and speaker wires so the the QS8' were on the two inboard amps, tand the rear M80's were now on the out board channles. My logic was that if the M80's were causing the heating problem, the QS8's would not be working the center amps as hard.
This timne I thought I had soved the issue when it got to the 33 minute time, no channel drop out...YEA ! OOPS, at 34 minutes, I not only lost the usual left rear, but also lost, right rear, right front, and center.....I give up, becaue now it seems all I did was distriubte the heat gain more even and cause more thermo protectors to kick in. Wnet to bed and wait to see what Steve has to say the next day.
Next morning well waiting for a call, realized I had not done one test yet, since Steves main thought was at this point that I was simply over driving the amp, decided to use the meter, and test the left rear speaker and see what the watts were when it cut out. Ran music for 48 mins, at the - 15 dp, and when the left channel cut out, the peak wattage was 92.16, and the average wattage for that 48 mins was 7.562. I then spent the next few hours measuring the other six spekaers and added up the total wattage being used by all seven speakers when the thermo kicked in, it was a big total of 476.31 watts, out of the 300x7 @ 4 ohms that the 770 produces.
When Steve did call, he was unable to talk to the factory, and was going to call me back the next day, I informed him of the latest tests, and that I was not happy with this after trouble shooing for over three weeks, and asked even if I waitited till he talked to the factory, what good would it do, I could not repair the 770 here, it would still need to be shipped back to Outlaw Steve then asks if I was saying that I did not want the 770 returned after it was repaired ??
I kindly reminded him of the 30 day gurantee and that I was not happy at this point, and would just prefer to send both the 950/770 back, and let them find out exactly what is going on, and that I was not upset, or have bad feelings about Outlaw products, I think I just get a defective 770, which can happen with any barnd, I have had it before, no big deal. He agreed to my retning them, and aked for a week or two for them to find the problem and contact me. So they will be boxed up as soon as I receive the return tags, Im'm not thrilled about the problems, as I will most likely invest a lot more to replace them, but at this point, I don't think I want to try another 770. So for now, back to research, and I still have my old Sony STR-DE935 and it wll handle equipment and the 5.1 for now. <g>

Very interesting post. Thanks.
Maybe you should have given Steve, Alans number, or tried 3 way calling.

Ya, may have taken less time. But I feel like I took up to much of Alans time the way it was, this was not an Axiom related problem at all, but as usual, Axiom has went out of thier way once again for me and its very much appreciated.

Sorry to hear about all the problems you have had. Considering that I am an Axiom/Outlaw user, I found your post very interesting. During this whole mess, did Outlaw ever offer to send a replacement 770 to see if your problem was a defective unit? Hopefully, their repair folks can figure out what the issue was. Please, keep us posted on your findings.

Good luck,

David

No, that is what rather upset me, Steve never offered to send a replacement, and yesterday he mentioned the reason why, it was beacuse he was concered that if he sent a replacement and I had the same issue, it would just be more time and cost involved.

I had a feak thing with the EP600 a few weeks after haivng it, it blew a fuse or two, after the second blown fuse, I was told by Joe at Axiom, if it happened again, not to replace the fuse, to call him and a replacement EP600 would be out the door the next day. Thats been about 3 weeks ago and have had no more problems, but this is the kind of support I expected from Outlaw, so I was a bit disappointed when I did not get it. ;-)

I do understand that techs need to try and eliminate any user caused issues, and that is why I tried and did all of the trouble shooting they requested., as I stated, no ill feelings, was just a problem, not the first, and sure not the last. ;-)

Damn! That's too bad. I have an Outlaw M200 that I use for my VP150 center channel speaker and it works flawlessly. Its even gotta keep up with a B&K Reference 2220 and has no problem doing it at all. I agree that Outlaw amps are great, but I don't know about "bulletproof!" Bulletproof to me is Krell, McIntosh, B&K Reference Series, Sunfire, Bryston, Aragon, and the like.

Monoblocks, yes........I have read nothing but great things about them, that was my suggestion to Steve about two weeks ago, I wanted to exchange the 770 for seven of the mono's, they have a group price for 7, not much more than the cost of the 770, which I would have gladly paid, but as I stated in a post on another thread, Steve was very hesitant to do that till the 770 heat issue was resolved. *confused me*

Now that's odd. I consider Outlaws CS on par with Axioms. I hope it isn't a sign of things to come. Anyway, have you decided on another brand?

I doubt if this is normal for Outlaw, kinda think that this was a freak accurance, and they were just trying nail down the casue, at least that is what I hope.

At any rate, another choice, ya, Anthem, Parasound, and thanks to a few nameless people here <g> Sunfire, and now Aragon which I had spaced out for a time. Needs are 300 wattsx7 continous, and a processor/controller, don't care if it has fm/am or not, never use it.

I too, have heard nothing but praise for Outlaw's CS. However, I have never had a problem so I have no personal experience. Although, having dealt with Axiom on a tweeter and woofer issue in one of my M22s, it is hard to imagine anybody on the planet offering better CS than Axiom. Although...praise for Axiom CS...that is old news around these parts.

Anthem and Sunfire are excellent choices. Parasound is ok, but personally, I consider the Outlaw amps a better choice than Parasounds for the M80's. I had the pleasure of using an A23 when I first got my M60's, and while it did sound good, it added a little "tinny" sound on the top end. I also tried it on my Martin Logan Ascents and it seemed to do a good job of driving those, but again a little tinny on the top end, but it was much more noticable on the Axiom's.

If you are looking for one amp to drive all seven speakers, I suggest the B&K Reference 200.7 amp. We (the A/V retail company I use to work for) used one in out Martin Logan theater demo room to drive two Prodigy fronts, a Theater center, and Ascent surrounds with ease. That thing was on at least 12 hours a day and in a cabinet with minimal space. The M80's wouldn't be a problem for that amp at all. Good luck!

Thanks for the input, will do some checking ito your suggestion.

At this point, I think all you memebrs with your combined expeiriance should just vist and help with the decision process. I'll provide the beer and BBQ, you guys provide the Axiom power solution as to what to buy. Its warming up here in the valley, so the BBQ is cleaned and ready to go. should be in the 70 - 80's in a week or two..

Yeah I will drive up from San Luis Obispo with some bottles of our famous local Pinot Noir Wine. I would love to hear your system when it is back at optimal status. Please tell me you have a universal DVD player so I can bring up my SACDs.

San Luis Obispo ? have not been there since about 1974, bet its changed a lot.

Don't have have any yet, but the Sony DVP-CX985V is suppose to handle them, if not, will just a new player, it was on next on the list till this issue about replacing the Outlaws. ;-)

Dennis, you have plenty of reason to be unhappy and to not want to try Outlaw again and you've gotten a lot of good suggestions from the guys. But....you don't need a different amp(especially a more expensive one), you need a 770 that works, as nearly all of them do. Give it another try.

Well I was going to do that or go with the mono blocks. But Steve wanted to to keep the 950 and then wait till they had time to trouble shoot the 770 at their factory or where ever, and said he would try and call me in a few weeks. I didn't wish to sit here with a 950 that was useless without an amp, and not know when the system would be working again. ;-) It will all work out, and be good, and will just have a BBQ and have all the local Axioms owners over.

Everyone bring a power amp. Two channel minimum.

That really surprises me. I've had good experiences with Outlaw.

Good Luck!

What happens if the Outlaw tech find that your 755 was defective? Would you stick with Outlaw? Or, are you switching amps regardless?

Just curious.

Well since Steve was so indecisive as to when I could get a response, I'm changing to something else. I have $5,600 invested in the Axioms, and I'm not going to sit here for weeks to see what they find out, there are other good systems out there, just more money, but after over 3 weeks of mucking around trying to get the system to work, just want it finished so I can enjoy it and not muck every day with it. ;-)

That's right! You shouldn't have to wait around while they try to figure out what the problem is in the defective unit. It really surprises me, though, that they in fact would make you wait instead of just sending out another unit immediately. Did they just flat out refuse to send you a replacement while they worked on the defective unit?

Yup, which kind of makes me think that it may not be a defect, but if fact, they know it will just not handle the amount of power I'm demanding for the M80's at 90 to 110 db in the listening area at times. ;-) Will see if I'm corect of what I hear back, " Sorry Dennis, we coul dfind nothing defective on the 770, as I was trying to tell you, there is something in your system casuing the problem" any bets, if I'm wrong, I will provide the beer and food for a BBQ. <g>

Have ya checked out this Rotel RMB 1095 5 cannel amp.You could match it up with a Rotel RB 1080 and get your 300 watt per channel.I use the RB 1080 with my 80s and IMO it sounds sweet.Then of course you could match it up with either of these Rotel processors and have one really nice system.

KRELL..... buy you a couple of them, they will be the next amps that i will buy....

Actually, the 770 will handle seven maggies without a problem. Maggies are harder to drive than the M80's. I know you have a defective unit. The key to quicker service is to exaggerate the problem. For example: "I saw a small plume of smoke come from the amp after 20 minutes of use." That will get there attention . Also try posting the problem on their (Outlaw's) message board.

He should not have to do that. That story is kinda worrying me because i was planning on buying seperates or there new reciver in the fall.
Jake

I agree. I have twisted humor.
I would have demanded a replacement and if that didn't work then return it. Needless to say, I will not buy from Outlaw again after reading this post. I'm very disappointed with the lack of customer service that this gentleman had to go through.

Tom

I did not post my expierance with the 950/770 to say that Outlaw products are not good, rather that I was disappointed in the CS about this issue. The Outlaws arrived here on 01/07 and I felt after about the third call, a replacement should have been sent, no questions asked, not to expect the customer to play trouble shooter for weeks, and then to start knocking my M80's, that was a bad mistake. <g> Since posting this here, I have had two other reports of the same issue, and as for posting on the Outlaw forum, as I stated earlier, there were a few posts about heat issues on the 770, and the one from last April, which as of Feb, had not been resolved, and there was no reason to post there and start a war. ;-) In my older age, I just don't have the patience that I use to have, and as well as I like the performance/quality of the 770, with the reluctance to just send a new 770, I gave up. Off in a few hours to audition B&K, and see what I think. BBQ party weather is here, have one next weekend, so need to make a decision and get some power soon. LOL

Outlaw needs to become aware of this post and when I say aware I mean the top dog of the company needs to know.
If it was a beta test I would totally understand the hum and haw involved here. Since he purchased this equipment he should've got the red carpet treatment.
I almost get the impression that Outlaw is worried about shipping costs. If so, they need to go to a modular approach like ATI or Sherborn. That way it doesn't cost them as much to ship out an amp module rather than a 90 lbs amp.

I didn't say that you where bashing Outlaw. I said I was dissappointed and surprised that Outlaw's CS is sub par.
The B&K amplifiers are VERY rock solid.

Good luck!

I should not post well waking up, I did not take your post as saying I was, I thought I had sent the post not as a reply to your post, someone clicked the wrong button. ;-)

I understand . I'm still working on my first cup of coffee. I just didn't want you to get the wrong impression. I feel bad for you and don't think anyone should have to go through what you have. I'm very worried now because all of my Outlaw stuff is over a year old and I could never return it now if I needed to.

You should have no worries, seems you are running the same Axiom speaker set up I started with, and the problem started when some fool decided to start running the system at 100 - 110 db so he could enjoy his tunes any where in the neighbor hood, and started addding more M80's.

I had a similar problem a year ago. I called Outlaw and they told me that I needed a dedicated 20 Amp circuit for the 755. At first I thought it B.S. but I tried anyway. The good thing is that it worked.

Yup, but when I was asked that, told them that becasue of the $40k computer room, that when the house was built in 2000, I had a whole house surge protector installed, and I have more dedicated circuits then I want to think about. The HT system has two 20 amp clean circuits, so I really doubted that was a possible problem, think that is when it went back the Axioms being the problem. <g>

If you pick up the B&K, let us know how it is.
I've always liked their amplifiers <drool >...

Tom

You have probably seen this, but here's another post with similar problems on a 770.

"Is it common for the 770 to cut out? I have only started to use my 950/770 recently, maybe 3 or 4 hours of use since I hooked them up, both new. I have it connected to 2 Paradigm Studio 100's, a 570 center, and 4 ADP Studio surrounds. It seems that it was running warm at nominal levels, then when I played less then 5 minutes of louder levels, it cut out. I let it sit for a few minutes,and then it cut out again after maybe 2 minutes of loud playing. I had to reset the switch in the back both times. I have it in a rack with about 8" of clearance above it. Does it need a fan on it all the time? I am shocked that it will not handle this level, as it wasn't loud enough to distort. Does this problem occur for anyone else? "

The main suggestions were :

- strand shorts in the speaker cables
- pre-amp putting out HF oscillations & overdriving the amp
- speaker impedence wacky

In this case the problems happened when listening to loud music but not when listening to movies. Problems are still there as of a couple of weeks ago. The owner lives in Canada and was concerned about the costs of shipping back to the factory for repair.

http://ubb.outlawaudio.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=16;t=000106

You've already sent the amp back, right ? If not, my next thought would be to put the rubber feet on blocks (or Habitant soup cans ) to get more space below the amp and better airflow up through the heat sinks. The feet on the 770 are big (an inch or so) but that doesn't seem like enough to convection-cool when outputting close to 2000 watts.

My personal opinion is that with the amp sitting on the feet Outlaw provides there just isn't enough airflow to keep everything cool with a bunch of 4 ohm speakers. I bet that Outlaw tests with the amp in some kind of rack that has an open bottom -- not to "cheat" but just because that's the way the lab is set up.

I bet in three months you will have the first Outlaw 770+ "Bigfoot" in your house -- if Outlaw is smart you will.

I wonder how these are???? http://www.norh.com/products/leamp2/index.html

Yes, that is the post that I was refering to, and I may have said this before in this post, if I did, sorry for repeating. ;-)

short strands - I purchased 300' of the Axiom cable, have checked and re-checked with meter, and at the request of Outlaw, even installed 28 banana plugs to eliminate a wire touching any where, so I am sure the wire is not an issue at this point.

950 issue - at thier request, everything was disconnted from the 770, left on for twice the 4 hours they requested, no warmer than usual.

speaker inpendence - this is what they keep saying has to be the issue, and I have tested as well as I can, so unless I accpet the fact that I have five screwed up M80's, this is not the problem.

And like you, I even used some spacers, to the point of having the 770 seven to eight inches off of the marble tile floor, it made no differace, the themo on left rear amp would still kick after 20 minutes.

It has been frustrating, I can not out think the amp, it beats me every time, no matter what I try. :-)

Yes, the Outlaws are still here, waiting for the return shipping labels to arrive by mail. So if anyone can think of something I have not tried, I'm willing to try anything, just post it and I'll give it a go.


Off to audition B&K, will report back on my thoughts.

You probably tried already... Does the 770 cut out no matter what channel you connect from the 950 to the 770? For example: try connecting a different output from the 950( say the front right) to the offending channel on the 770.
It would be nice if it was just the 950 and not the amp.

I wondered that, but Tharkun mentioned earlier he had tried subbing a QS8 onto the offending channel. It seemed to spread the problem around a bit if I remember correctly -- multiple channels went into shutdown but it took longer.

I'm going to go back and re-read all the posts again, we might be missing something, but it sure sounds like Tharkun has tried everything.

Just returned, been a long 8 hours, listened to two differant systems, and did make a purchase, but going to grab food, and then post, till then take a guess at which brand.

Ok I'll take a stab at it. You grabbed a rotel 1095 because Wid was so charming.

I was gonna guess the B&K.

It has been a stressful day, so will write a review of the B&K audition verses the Parasound, the only two brands I have within a reasonable driving time, in the morning when I have a refreshed brain. But I'm sure I will have many here that will think I didn't make a good decision, I went with the Parasound Halo's, will be a week or two before they arrive, so will have time to re-think my decision many times. :-) I really have appreciated all of the input, and hopefully once I post my reasons for the choice, it will be a bit more clearer as to why.

So...what parasound processor/amp did you pick up?

Geez, brain is fried....went with the A52 ( 5 chan 400watts@ 4ohms) A21 (2 chan 400watts@4ohms) and the C2 processor.

You do mean the A51,the A52 is 225 @ 4 ohm.

Geez...brain is really dead, yes, A51, thanks for correcting me. ;-)

That's some really fine equipment you picked out.I hope it serves you well.

OOch, nice and equally expensive.
I will be curious to hear what you think about the Halos Tharkus. My previous audition took place quite some time ago. I can only wonder if they've tweaked things since.

chess, I had a few people tell me that most of the HALO's since mid 2004 have a newly designed power supply. I don't think there was a problem with the others but from what I understand John Curl himself wanted a higher current draw. Perhaps this would address any possible hum issues that may have come up with the A23.

As you know, I have never heard the hum but if it was out there, the first place I would look is my power supply.

You know that's quite ironic NH.
I just mentioned to Tharkun today that if anything, i figured the hum was coming from an overly loud power supply.

Well I had taken over the auditioning room for two hours, I checked both the A51 and A21, and of course no hum, but the guy I deal with, which I have always been able to trust, states in this store, no hum reports since he has been working there, and thats 5 years. *shrug*

Cool Tharkun. Hope this set works out.

My shop deals with the Parasound stuff and I personally like it. We never had a hum issue either except when one of the power supplies came loose and as a result had a bad chassis ground. It was a quick fix 1.) Nutdriver 2.) LOCTITE.

Enjoy your setup!

Tom

have been working a a post from yesterdays adventure, should be finished in a while, was distracted using photo shop to see how the new Halo's will fit into the new cabinet I built.

Interesting thing I found, someone from the Outlaw audio forum has seen this thread, and has posted a message on thier board asking if anyone could assist me.

I saw that too. Perhaps Steve's boss at Outlaw will get the point and hopefully this won't happen again to another customer.

I agree, I feel bad about the CS thing, and hope this was an isolated thing. Life is short, so I will just move on and enjoy the Halo's. ;-)

Update as of today, still waiting for teh return shipping lables to arrive, may need to call and see what the hold up is, oops, no pun intended.

The return shipping lables arrived today, so will be packing up the 950/770 tomorrw and calling UPS for a pickup. Took 9 days for a letter from Maine to here, good thing it was nothing important. lol

It would appear the Outlaw amp that you had did not show any problems during testing.

I have to wonder if the Outlaw amplifier is more sensitive to low impedance than the Parasound or perhaps their thermal cutoff limit is set higher to ensure the amplifier's longevity. That is, it may be a "over-safe" safety of the amplifier design rather than a fault.

Apparently after testing, and finding "no problems" they sold the amp as B-stock with no further issues.

I am tending to think that while in use the M80s may drop from their nominal impedance and, while not faulty, were causing the thermal overload in the Outlaw amp.

My Monitor Audios are 6 ohm so they should not have any issues like this.

Wha? How do you know this?

In reply to:

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Wha? How do you know this?

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Checked with the Outlaws. When my home theater room is built, I planned to get Outlaw equipment. This thread peaked my curiosity so I am researching.

It seems like a problem that is explainable but no one seems to have taken it to the final conclusion. The Axiom speakers work, the Outlaw amp and processor work. They did not work together? Something does not add up.

Well, that's Outlaw's side of the story. Dennis has a different take on the whole thing. We don't know which side is accurate, and each of us is free to believe what we wish.

Jack has a good point, and as he says, there are two sides of the issue. I do not wish to restart this thread again, if you are interested in the consumer version, contact me privately.

Funny thing. I have a friend who has an Outlaw 1050 receiver (65 wpc?) driving a pair of M60 like M665s and a pair of M22 like M55s in the back ... sounds terrific.

I have another friend who has the same speakers driven by an Outlaw 950 processor and 5 of the Outlaw 200 watt monoblocks. Does not sound nearly as good.

Go figure.

Could be the differnce in room acoustics.