1-1/2 Watts?

I'm only a solid-state guy, so take my opinion with a grain of salt...  

I recently upgraded to very powerful mono-blocks with a VU gauge in them and I was amazed how little power it says I am running.  My speakers weren't chosen for efficiency, and are spec'd at just 88dB, but I tend to listen around 1-2W most time, and very often what seems to be tenths of a watt or so - it's tough to read the gauges at that point.

What I have noticed is that content of the music matters greatly. Listening to bass-heavy music (Billie Eilish) at the same volume as more acoustic fare (Craig Finn) really demonstrated this to me.  Just adding a little bass thump will push the power up to a whopping 5W or so - and that's with a powered subwoofer handling the really low frequencies.

I wonder how the small amps are spec'd for continuous vs instantaneous power.  If they're separately spec'd, is the instantaneous power significantly higher that the 1.5W? 

I have a Dennis Had built Inspire Fire Bottle with EML 45 tubes and a Had LP3.1 preamp pushing my Klipsch Forte II's.  Barely 2 watts, but man do those Forte's sing.  I have another system with a Reisong A-10 EL34 that is around 12 total watts, and it gets my Polk Audio Monitor 10's as loud and crisp as I need.  Sometimes less is more.

Check out the Decware website if you want to dig into this a little more.

It’s events and stories like these that help people (hopefully) understand it’s not the wpc of the amp or sensitivifty of the speakers that have anything to do with how they sound, only how loud they may get. Some will still deny it, but objectively and scientifically, it’s true.

Much of the time I use an Elekit TU-8900 (with Lundahls etc.) RCA Black Plate 2A3s and Brimar input stages.

Speakers are 87dB Rockport Atria IIs - that amp does what I need, beautifully - except if I am going to have an extended Mahler session when I step up to an XA25 - which is 50wpc into 4 ohms.

2.83 v (2 watts) at the speaker gives me 83dB in my listening position.

I am in the process of building a 300B SE circuit, with two 300Bs per side - in a configuration that I think can be called series. Each output tube uses 1/2 of the primary so its like a PP but each half is in the same phase.  The OPT is gapped for 80ma.  The hope is that I get the SE magic with a bit more power - the current is limited to 80 ma so the primary inductance of the OPT can be kept high for bass response.  Running parallel at160 ma would require a bigger air gap in the OPT - losing bass response.

I am hoping this will allow the big stuff to sing but keep the low power SE sound.