There has been some discussion of this very topic in the forum before. You might be interested in soundhound's commpents in this thread as to why he feels that a damping factor of 80 presents no cause for concern.

Thanks gonk, that was an interesting older thread.

However, in the above email from Steve, we see that even Outlaw Audio themselves are expressing concern about the M200's not having best control over a speaker's woofers or mid-bass drivers, due to the M200's low 80 damping factor.

We can trust Steve at Outlaw Audio in his comments, yes?

Did you know that the effective damping factor “delivered” to your speakers is affected by the impedance of the speaker cables? Before I quibbled about 80+ versus 400, I’d make sure that the impedance between the amp and the driver was down to about 0.1 to 0.4 ohms round trip. Two ohms round trip impedance in speaker cables would lower the effective damping factor to a point where you wouldn’t have the “good control” you're seeking over your drivers even if your amp had a damping factor of 1,000,000.

i tend to agree with sh on the notion that damping factor is overrated. i can think of many more important things that qualify a good amp. though i cant defend the m200 from personal experience, most people that have them like them.

Guys, we see above that Outlaw Audio themselves are recommending one of their other amps, instead of the M200, because of the damping factor issue.

Am I the only one bothered by this?

Apparently so. My 200s push NHT speakers at very high levels with no problem.

I'm not bothered by it. Do some research on the subject and you will find that the difference between a damping factor of 80 and 800 is negligible.

Damping factor is one of those audiophile terms where a small grain of truth is surrounded by a large mass of hyperbole and misinformation. My all time favorite is skin effect though. The claims for skin effects are usually quite humorous.

I personally love my 5 M200's and consider them a very good product both in terms of sonics and bang-for-the-buck. In addtion they appear good enough to be a platform for aftermarket modification as seen HERE

i think the claims for skin effect are reasonable. i dont think that damping factor is useless, just overrated.

Well OK, I have now done what I consider to be quite a bit of research on the relative importance of damping factor in amps.

I now realize that a damping factor of 80 is just fine. In fact, it is a very good figure for an amp, especially for a monoblock.

I guess that I am just going to HAVE to buy some of these amps!