Ok for anyone who isn't sure of the final verdict, the only real problems I had with the Emotiva stemmed from not being able to figure out the 12 volt trigger. I tried numerous fittings, but they all failed. So yes the Emotiva did shut down on me, but it was always when I was switching from Video to AUX or Cable to Video or something like that. That split second where the reciever wasn't sending any sort of signal to the amp tripped the protection circut for some reason? I always thought if I had a properly working 12 volt trigger installed it would fix the problem. But like I said, I couldn't figure that problem out.
As far as playing the M80's, the XPA-3 did that with ease up to levels that even I could barely stand. But like I pointed out in another thread, when you match a lot of power with these M80's, you get awesome sound all the way to max volume. If you've ever turned the volume up on just your AVR and at a certain point the speakers started to break up and you thought you'd reached the limit of the speaker (I'm talking about M80's, not just ANY speaker), you didn't. You reached the limit of your AVR and it went into clipping. Your M80's will play distortion free with enough clean power.
And I voted for the stay-puff marshmallow man. Althought now that I think about it, Boo-Berry might have been a better choice.
