Power and hearing perception are logarithmic. Like the earthquake richter scale. A 100 watt amplifier is only twice as loud as a 10 watt amplifier. However higher the power the More relaxed is the output. Also when buying an amp always look at the power output in watts RMS into 8 ohms CONTINUOUS output. The rest is is marketing information trying to make it look better than it is.
Watts and power
Can somebody break it down in layman's terms for me? Why is it that sometimes an amp that has a high watt rating (like, say, a lot of class D amps do) don't seem to always have the balls that much lower rated A or AB amps do? I have heard some people say, "It's not the watts, it's the power supply." Are they talking about big honkin' toroidal transformers? I know opinions vary on a speaker like, say, Magnepans - Maggies love power, right? A lot of people caution against using class D amps to drive them and then will turn around and say that a receiver like the Outlaw RR2160 (rated at 110 watts into 8 ohms) drives Maggies really well! I'm not really asking about differences between Class D, A, or AB so much as I am asking about how can you tell the POWER an amp has from the specs?