I think you probably knew I shared your feeling about TLSGuy's post style, but over the years I realized he's an extremely helpful member if those looking for help could ignore his style. In this case, I don't doubt the OP's ML speakers could perform very well depending on room acoustic/placement, use of subwoofers and room correction etc., but what TLSGuy's observations of the measured performance does in fact show there are better alternatives in the same price range.
He posted the FR and impedance curves, so we can all see that those speakers can be considered truly 4 ohm nominal, with dips to around 2 ohms. Your big B&Ws do have low dips and high phase angles too, but the ML speakers showed below 5 ohms over almost the whole main part of the audio band that music contents frequent full time! So, I have to agree TLSGuy's receiver buster seems almost appropriate, again, as long as we can ignore his brunt (or honest, undiplomatic
)approach, and the rest of his rhetoric, choice of words like "malpractice", incompetently designed etc., that are also highly subjective by nature..
One thing I would like to emphasized, as I typically had in the past, is the importance of the user's listening habit and distance. In this case, the OP mentioned volume of 71 ish, that's -9 for us who are more familiar with the relative scale. At such high volume level, using an entry level AVR (unlike your previous 3000 series that are consider midrange in the days) is really not the best for those big ML 60XTi that has ML recommended 20-400 W, and again rated impedance is 4 ohms.
Surely that means the X2700H can do 20 W into 4 ohms but...
By the way, when the speaker company rated their speakers 4 ohms and recommended 20-400 W, it may be reasonable to assume they meant 20-400 W into 4 ohms. If true (and I am not sure, someone should ask them), then if we even take the mid point, i.e. 200 W. I highly doubt even the flagship Denon AVRs can be rated 200 W 8ohms without caveat, though they can certainly drive 4 ohm speakers all day long if used with music, and not test tones.
Lastly, I think speakers and amplifiers manufacturers could put people like you, I, TLSGuy out of business on such forums if they would get their act together and do a better job in their specifications, such that their potential buyers would have a much better understanding of the "power need", instead of the vague 20-400 W, with no caveats at all. But thank goodness they are not going to do anything that they think may hurt sales, so we can continue to have fun on forums.
