Hi Seeking,
While JohnK is supremely confident of any AV receiver being able to drive Axiom's 4-ohm M80s/VP180s with ease, that is not the customer history we have here at Axiom. I will now recite, yet again, the brands of AV receivers that have never had problems of protection-circuitry shut-down or current limiting driving the M80s: Denon, Sherwood Newcastle, Harman-Kardon, Rotel, Outlaw Audio, B&K, Macintosh, and NAD. This list includes even entry-level models from Denon, H/K, Sherwood Newcastle, and Outlaw Audio, which we checked out at our factory listening room.
Note that the above list assumes the owner is not trying to drive the AV receiver beyond its output limits or into clipping. Any well-designed AV receiver will temporarily shut down if cranked to levels that trip the thermal sensors on the output devices.
Older models of Onkyo, Yamaha, and Pioneer were not stable with the M80s and would repeatedly shut down.
I'm a bit hesitant to recommend even recent Onkyo models because I note that in Dan Kumin's recent tests of an Onkyo for Sound&Vision magazine, when it was connected to 4-ohm loads, it went into current-limiting mode after about 2 seconds, which limited the power output in all channels to 45 watts per channel maximum, regardless of where the impedance switch on the receiver was set.
Regards,
Alan
