Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions Keep Blowing woofers on M80 V3

I am powering a pair of M80 v3 via a NAD C 375BEE, its rated at 200W.

Over the last 6-7 years I have blown 4 woofers, I didn't keep track but I guess I may have cycled through them all.

I can't imagine thats expected, I do know powering them with a weak amp may burn them however I would have guess 200W would be enough and 375BEE is a respected amp in the community. Anyone else faced such a problem?

Were all 4 from the original M80 shipment?

With a voltmeter set to DC, check for DC on the output of the amp. That can melt voice coils.

It depends on when you notice they were blown. I've blown a driver on every passive speaker I owned before 1996, and in hindsight, I was probably unplugging and plugging devices into my integrated amp while powered on. I never played music loud enough to wreck either my speakers nor my hearing.

Anyone have an answer to this? My 5th (!!!!) midrange just blew. I do have a cheap receiver (Denon AVR-S540BT); would that be the reason?

Not sure how common it is but I had two woofers and two tweeters go out on my passives. So far the replacements have held up fine.

Considering that you've spent probably as much on replacement midrange drivers as you did on the receiver, I would say it's time to upgrade the receiver. You need good clean power to drive these speakers effectively. Also, I would disable any sort of EQ or tone adjustments in the receiver. I have set up two pairs of M60s on four different receivers and each time the speakers are happiest with absolutely no adjustments to the EQ at all. In fact, each time, the auto EQ settings that resulted from running the room correction/room setup on the receiver absolutely wrecked the sound quality. Everything else from the auto setup was great, just not the EQ. So if you've done that, and are running a cheap/low power receiver I can see maybe having problems with midranges. Though I might also consider sending your crossovers to Axiom or another well regarded professional to have them gone over to make sure something hasn't popped.

Another thing to check would be your source(s). When I play Pandora through a Roku it sounds quite distorted and would likely blow drivers if I let it play loudly for a long time. (I don't do it at all)

Lastly, this is usually not a problem with modern/simple setups, but you should always turn on all of your sources first before turning on the receiver to avoid the thump/pop/crack that you can sometimes get by doing things in the wrong order. Likewise when powering down, go in the reverse order, receiver off first then everything else off.

Hope you get your issue resolved.

The v4 version of the M80s are 4 ohm speakers and I believe the v3's are too; the Denon is not rated for 4 ohms (6 min) so it's possible that's the problem.

Other than that, have you checked that you don't have a speaker wire strand touching the wrong post?

I agree… most likely cause is an under powered amp.