This is very interesting. I truly hope that a half watt nominal out of the 1400 will give me the thump that I'm looking for. I'm even willing to go to a watt nominal but anything beyond that will pose a risk to my hearing.

John was sharing some of his impressions of the A1400 and his M80s with Eric and me yesterday. Rather than me paraphrasing, hopefully he will weigh in again with his views.

Keep in mind that the "unofficial" power handling ability of the M80s is 900W. Also keep in mind that its the woofers and bass transients that require the most power. Anytime my audiophile pals have upgraded to more powerful amps their first comments are always about how much cleaner and distinct bass sounds. Their later comments are then about dynamics and transparency.

I guess whether one uses the M80s with the sub or not is within the realm of the topic of this thread, so I will reluctantly take the risk of boring everyone with Alan's very informative Q/A section here regarding the M80s:

"In the case of the M80s, they have been tested a minimum of five hours using modified pink noise at 400 watts rms from the amplifier. Furthermore, they have been tested at this level for 100 hours using highly dynamic source material. We keep the ratings conservative, i.e. the tests are actually done at 600 watts for a 400-watt maximum power rating. In fact, the M80s have been tested up to 1200 watts without any problems."

So, I was not worried that my M80s could handle a horsepower (745.699872 watts ) each with the A1400-8. Of course, I never plan to run the speakers at this level anyway, but what I noticed with the new amp is that when listening to recordings with fairly wide dynamic range at higher volumes, the sudden peaks in the source resulted in surprisingly powerful and articulate bass in the M80s that I had no idea they were capable of. At higher volumes, where the Yamaha would begin to get disturbingly loud, the A1400-8/M80 combination became decidedly satisfying and I wanted to turn up the volume knob ever more. In summary, I wonder Mojo, whether the M80s are sounding "thin" to you and needing your EP-600 because you are under-powering them, not because they are not built to handle the power and the low frequency extension (in music anyway).

John