Ouch!
Hopefully it means things were sorted with Emotiva and he's in a better place.....musically speaking. Sometimes, no news is good news.
Still, one does wonder. This was a head scratcher.
Obviously not a widespread problem otherwise we'd hear about it more. (Heck I have a pair of their monitors and I've run them hard at times with no apparent ill effect.)
The fact that BOTH speakers had this problem, and with more than one power source, does lend a little credence to using things beyond their limit......or maybe that there was damage one time, and that defect then impacted all future use regardless of what amplification was used.
But we never saw a true SPL measurement, so who knows?
I have a set of the (discontinued) slim-line bookshelf speakers, got them on closeout for ~$160. I thought they may make good surrounds, I listened to them briefly and boxed them up.
I also have a USP-1, it is a GREAT preamp.
And, an XDA-1 DAC. That one, they did a poor job implementing the volume control, where anything <100% volume actually "discards bits". But, I knew that when I purchased it new at a steep discount, and if you have a preamp, then it is inconsequential. And, even when I did use the volume on it, I never could pick out degrade audio. But, that was why they finally came clean on it and discontinued it, and fixed it with the XDA-2.
What concerns me the most with EMO is there silly short product life cycles.
