Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions Denon 2803 Overheating

I have a Denon 2803 receiver driving a pair of Axiom M60’s a VP150 center and
QS8 surrounds. The receiver is housed on a shelf below the TV by its self , open front and back with three inches clear on the top. When playing some DVD’s or CD’s at what I call fairly high volume (100 db) the unit seems to be over heating and then shutting its self off. To achieve 100 db requires only + 2-4 db on the volume display, the manual says it will go to +18, so I would not think I am running the receiver that hard. Does this sound normal? If so would some sort of fan help the problem? By the way I have 3 inchs clear on top and 5 on each side

dmuir
I suggest you read the last paragraph in this post.
SPL of 100dB (depending on distance) is really quite high. I'm not surprised that your Denon is shutting down considering it is driving 5 speakers to that volume level.
If you prefer to get the sound even louder, you may have to resort to finding a larger speaker since adding 'power' will not add a significant gain in the dB department.
To relieve the receiver of some burden, you could purchase a separate stereo amplifier to run the M60s. However, every speaker still has a maximum limit of SPL that it can attain before the driver hits its excursion point (limitation of the speaker) or begins to distort (limitation of the power source/amp). In your case, the receiver is shutting down to protect the amp in the receiver from overheating but this also helps to protect your speakers from distortion.
Be careful that your receiver is not already creating distortion at SPL under 100dB before it shuts down.

I think that 3" is inadequate considering how hard you're pushing that thing. I've only gotten my Denon 1803 (same volume indications) up to that volume level a few times with my M60s, and it is quite loud, working fairly hard. For any extending time, that's gonna get hot.
A fan might help, if putting on top of an A/V rack isn't possible.

I have a 2802 with the same speaker combo. +2 on the volume scale is pretty unbearably loud. Even when the wife and little one are gone I don't go past -10, usually staying at around -20. Maybe if you only drove your m60s the amp would fare better.

I've got the AVR-2803 with the same speaker configuration (with an Hsu VTF-2) and I've got to agree with BigWill, what you're doing with an SPL of 100 Db is 1) going to be hard on the receiver and 2) it's going to be death to your hearing unless perhaps you've got to have it that loud to hear it now :-(. I strongly suggest you search te web for TINNITUS and discover that there is no cure.

DM, as previous posts have indicated, if you're playing at 100dB, which would imply peaks at possibly 120dB, it's deafeningly(literally)loud.