Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners Wife overheated my Denon 3808ci

I will start with this disclaimer, i do not have sufficient cooling space around my denon. Because of the height of the VP150 center channel I had to lower the shelf above the amp. There is ample cooling to both the sides and back but only approx. 1.5" above which is well below the recommended distance.

So now that I have that out of the way lets get started. I have an Epic 80 7.1 system using a Denon 3808ci for the receiver. I have never had an overheating issue nor do I see one. My wife was listening to music while I was out. Yes she likes her music loud. To make matters worse she wanted to go to the other end of the house and do some work while still listening to music. This meant turning the volume up to +7.5, yes i do mean to have the plus in front of that number, in 7 channel stero mode. Just for reference the volume never goes up past -10 during movies or music becuase it is just too loud. At -10 for extended periods the amp section has never become more than warm.

So after around an hour and 25 minutes of this abuse the amp went down. The green ring on the power button started flashing red. I actually pulled into the driveway about 30 seconds after this happened. When I entered the house I got the whole "I don't know what happened, it just stopped working" speach. I tried pushing the button and it came back on for about 2 seconds before protecting itself again. At that point I felt the heat on my hand in front of the amp and she mentioned she might have been playing it a bit loud. After a 45 minute cool down it fired right back up like nothing happened.

I figured I'd post this as many people worry about the 4 ohm load of the M80's. Honestly I think if I had proper cooling nothing would have happened. Also I would never listen to the amp at this level

Yep, that was some extreme listening levels at +7.5 and it certainly shows how good the Denon's are.

You'll just have to buy her a pro amp for 'her' birthday.

Is there any room inbetween the reciever and the self above it? maybe you could get a few computer coolers.

Something like this

http://www.xoxide.com/slotcooler.html

I actually had a similar setup as you, I had a 5 channel amp with shelf maybe 1 inch above it. I got 3 of those fans, and wired them in parallel and then got a small DC power supply from Frys (3.5a i think). it worked pretty good.


Just one option.

I've put my Audio Trak pro amplifer into thermal protection a few times too. When it happens you could fry an egg on the cover. Same thing, I give it about 30 minutes and she's as good as new.

I don't make a habit of it.

That is why the thermal protecition switch is there. Glad to hear you good to go.

Paul

P.S. Come on guys, it's cool to have a wife that likes loud music!!!!

My center channel rattled off it's shelf a couple weeks ago and it fell behind my 3808 causing it to go into protect mode. One of the banana plugs came out and shorted the unit out because it touched the other plug. Luckily no harm was done.

Instead what could have happened is the clipping occurring at such a loud volume would lead to a fried tweeter or a driver in the speakers instead.

I think your wife could use a quick lesson in audio electronics and electrical theory.
Subject:
"Why one can never turn up a receiver volume to the max".
Simple answer:
One component won't be able to handle it.
Result:
Wife owes husband new equipment.

So perhaps you may skip the talk in the hopes that this would come about, however i don't know too many wives who would actually support the final result as stated.

Funny.

I read that as "Wife owns husbands equipment."

Don't they all?

I replaced my loud computer fans on my AVR and Pro Amp with these larger blade models from Monoprice and have been very happy with them. They run nice and quite, and move good air. No overheating issues. There are other modles that cost more and may work much better, but for the price this was hard to beat.