Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners New M80's

Greg, it appears that something's wrong which isn't directly due to the 3008(unless your unit is defective), since it should be able to easily drive M80s to beyond safe listening levels(as the numbers indicate, and other users have reported). The most common thing when something like this is present is an intermittent short in the connecting wires(or possibly internally in one of the speakers). Re-connect all the wires very carefully even if they appear to be good now. Try using only one M80 at a time to see if possibly an internal short is present in one of them.

D'oh. The first was a typo.

4 ohms, as the manual specifies. I've seen the advice to leave it on the 6 ohm setting.

I'm quite skeptical about this short theory, but I certainly would test it if I could. The problem is that I don't know how to reproduce the fault, yet.

Absolutely you should leave it on the 6 ohm setting. The other setting will simply limit current and therefore cause it to go into protect much more quickly.

The manual has to say that for the product to get a UL rating. But for performance you should leave it at 6 Ohm.

I wish I had known before I went to Game Stop and asked if they had it in stock!

Kind of figured so, put it back to the highest setting which is 6 ohm on an Onkyo and see how it does then.

Just so you know what the others are talking about regarding the impedance switch read this excellent article. It will explain it all in detail.

http://www.audioholics.com/education/amplifier-technology/impedance-selector-switch-1

Also, if you have the M80's set to large in the bass management settings, change it to small and use a higher crossover point. That will definitely help take some load off the AVR as well.

Thanks, all of you, for the information about the impedance switch. That being in the low setting, and having my fronts -- the M80s -- set to large, may very well be what has sent my Onkyo 3008 into protection mode. Also, I'm using the setting that sends LFE to the large speakers, as well as the subwoofers, so that could also be a factor.

In the discussion thread at Audioholics, there is some dissent from user kaiser_soze that the high impedance setting really is best. I'm looking forward to seeing some test results for this specific receiver about its behavior with 4 ohm speakers at the two impedance settings.

I have my fronts set to large, because my EP500 is using its high level inputs connected the receivers front outputs. The reason for that, in turn, is that the EP500 line-level inputs don't work. (It's obvious that there is a possibility of getting this repaired, so you needn't point it out to me.)

I'm still interested in the answer to the question I asked, if any of you has relevant experience: Would the XPA-3 used for the M80s (and VP180) fix the protection mode problem? I know there might be other remedies, but would the XPA-3 work?