The manufacturer determines the maximum power rating based on how much power the low frequency driver elements (the woofer or woofers) are rated to handle. The high frequency drivers will invariably have much lower power ratings, but music typically contains much less energy at high frequencies than at low frequencies.
The manufacturer's recommended minimum power rating is based on a rough guess as to how much power would be required to play music at reasonable volume in a relatively small room, at a relatively small listening distance.
As a goal, it's generally a good idea to have the power rating of the amplifier around the same as the speaker's recommended maximum power, especially as here if price and size don't matter, and we assume that "everything else equals" (meaning sound quality in particular).
You can get away with less power if your room is not particularly big, your listening distance is not particularly great, and the music you listen to does not have wide dynamic range. Recordings of classical symphony orchestra tend to have the widest dynamic range, meaning that they have the greatest difference in volume between loud and soft passages. Setting the volume level for good reproduction of the soft passages on that kind of material leads to very high power levels being required when the occasional orchestral peaks, bass drum beats, etc., occur.
Regards,
-- Al
The manufacturer's recommended minimum power rating is based on a rough guess as to how much power would be required to play music at reasonable volume in a relatively small room, at a relatively small listening distance.
As a goal, it's generally a good idea to have the power rating of the amplifier around the same as the speaker's recommended maximum power, especially as here if price and size don't matter, and we assume that "everything else equals" (meaning sound quality in particular).
You can get away with less power if your room is not particularly big, your listening distance is not particularly great, and the music you listen to does not have wide dynamic range. Recordings of classical symphony orchestra tend to have the widest dynamic range, meaning that they have the greatest difference in volume between loud and soft passages. Setting the volume level for good reproduction of the soft passages on that kind of material leads to very high power levels being required when the occasional orchestral peaks, bass drum beats, etc., occur.
Regards,
-- Al