Is there such a thing as too much power?

Alexberger and atmasphere,

I also agree that low efficiency means more power is needed and this results in thermal compression (as the wire in the voice coil heats up, resistance rises).  That is why high efficiency speakers typically sound more dynamic and lively.  

The reason the industry moved away from high efficiency has a lot to do with the large size of typical high efficiency speakers.  That size became an even "bigger" issue with the advent of stereo and the need for two speakers.  Smaller speakers became a commercial necessity for stereo.

I dont still understand the arguments against LOL....

ALL OTHER THINGS BEING EQUAL (That is the part people seem to be missing) a higher power amplifier will always be preferable.  It will run less stressed and have much more headroom.

As for the higher distortion at lower levels of a power amp, even those higher levels of distortion is still well BELOW anyone's hearing so it is a moot point.

This thread is worth a read (you can get the gist from the first two posts). By following the instructions you can work out how much power you need. If you look at the poll results you can see that  >70%  indicated 25W or less with nearly 40% needing only 4W.
Power in itself is not a bad thing but assuming you are working to some kind of a budget then it would be best to find the highest quality amplifier that meets your needs within your budget. Power adds significantly to the production cost of a product (less so with class D) because some of the most expensive components within a power amp are the power supply and heatsinks the size of which are proportionately related to the rated output power.

A lot of the stuff people believe about power makes an awful lot of sense. The only problem is that while the reasons make sense on paper they don't work out nearly so well in the real world. 

Point of order: one low-powered amp that sounds better than one high powered amp is by simple logic proof that power isn't everything. We have not one but hundreds of low powered amps that sound hugely better than thousands of much higher powered amps. So clearly something else is going on. 

What I think is going on, power is but one small item on a very long list of things that matter. In fact its kind of weak and pointless to qualify that. Its what I know is in fact going on. The list of things that affect sound is so much greater and longer than we know that it often strikes me as pointless to even be talking about them. 

I mean to talk about how many watts an amplifier puts out, in terms of sound quality, we might as well be talking about how many grains of sand in judging the beach at Cancun. Which would be a pretty nice beach... anywhere else but Cancun.

Hi @larryi ,

I'm not against to use, for example, small monitor speakers with sensitivity ~88-90dB/1W in 100-150 sq ft room. But in this combination even 300B SET will be enough.

I think the very popular but wrong way to do - using big low sensitivity  (< 88dB/1W)  big tower speakers in a big room.
In this situation need a huge amplification power and a result a strong and ugly compression.