11-11-14: Onhwy61
You're feeding your loudspeakers too much power and asking them to play too loud. How much bass do you think the woofer, even in Gemme's innovative design, can cleanly produce?
Yes! It's a small-diameter 2-way design in an elegantly designed and finished floorstanding enclosure. It's one thing to design a speaker capable of some deep audible bass; it's another to expect it to reproduce the full power of a 100-pc orchestra plus pipe organ. Expecting the latter performance just because it's an $8,000 speaker is not logical, especially when it's obvious that most of that money went into cabinetry, fit, and finish.
To get an idea just how much the cabinetry figures into the cost, check out the Odyssey Lorelei, also a 7" 2-way floorstander with bass into the 20s. The Lorelei, however, uses expensive drivers ($165 mid/woof, $167 tweeter) and utilitarian cabinetry, and comes in at $2900 for a pair containing over $660 worth of drivers.
Even so, I wouldn't expect them to soak up 700w and output 120+ dB without compression, distortion, and room overload. You may be better off adding a sub or two rather than chasing your tail trying to make a modest 2-way sound like a full-range 4+ driver 200-lb. floorstander.