What is your experience with amp power?

I will add another vote for quality over quantity. I was caught up in the whole more is better for over 5 years. I had amps up to 300 watts from the likes of Bryston and McIntosh. When I finally tried a lower powered tube amp I felt I had been had. I really think the sound of the amp is far more important that the watts. I think for most people and speakers that 30-40 watts is all that’s needed. 

Right now I'm listening to Eva Cassidy I Can Only Be Me through 86dB Harbeth's and 2 RELs at a little over 1/4 volume with a 35wpc Raven Audio tube amp.  

82 dB SPL peaks 10ft from the mains, sounds awesome. My room is 60ft w x 25ft d open plan.

Big amp power is not a necessity with the right speakers but is surely nice to have if you got it.

Depends mainly on how far you are from speakers and how loud you want to go. Some speakers will benefit from higher damping factor in particular , others less so.

Having said that, more power in a line of amps will never hurt. Much like a bigger engine in a car. Making music can be a lot of work, especially with the lowest frequencies. If you skimp on those you can get away with a lot less power. Power needed for flat response increases exponentially as frequency gets lower. You may never miss having that truly extended low end response if you don’t but you are missing out on something if not.

I used to sell many popular lines of amplifiers to a lot of people. Nobody who ever compared ever preferred the sound of a lower power amp in the line to a higher one. But when comparing different designs from different vendors, that’s more apples and oranges and harder to predict what will be preferred.

This talk about the need for power and how bass is better really hasn’t been my experience. It’s why I ended up with high power amps for so long. I’ve had two tube amps in my system since ditching the high power and both amps make far better bass than any of my giant ss amps did. The high power ss did make tighter bass.  My issue is it wasn’t accurate or full to me.  I feel like sometimes we want our bass not to reverberate, yet I think that’s what bass is. Anyways I really feel it’s personal preference like everything in this hobby. I would encourage everyone to try both low watt tube amps and high power ss and see which they prefer. Far as a need lots of power for speakers that are 85db sensitive or higher I just don’t but it. People act like 30 watts is nothing then they suggest 100 watts. It’s literally less than 5db difference in max volume. Unless your truly maxing out your amp it just doesn’t make since to me.