How many watts do you really need?

I like class A, but only to the point of becoming a major space heater. 

@kennyc Not me but the Gryphon company seems to believe so, as do a lot of people. “Pure Class A operation has, since we introduced the DM100 in 1991, always been a Gryphon hallmark, because no other circuit topology can match its sonic perfection,”

@gkelly They're quoting actual humans from very respected companies. The fact that you discount anything from that website says more about you than them.

This is an interesting question. Usually you probably wouldn't hear if you were just slightly running out of power. I had an interesting experience with a new McIntosh amp.

A little over a year ago I bought a new McIntosh MC152 amp (rated at 150 wpc), with a speaker protection circuit called Power Guard. Here's a brief explanation.  "a proprietary, patented signal overload technology designed to prevent amplifiers from clipping and over driving, which protects your speakers from potential damage. It continuously monitors both the input and output audio signals, making micro-adjustments in real-time to preserve sound quality".

My room is fairly large, and I have MoFi Sourcepoint 888 speakers with an average of 6 ohm impedance. During a listening session I was listening to AC DC Thunderstruck. It was sounding so good, I kept slightly turning it up. At one point I noticed the Power Guard LED's were slightly flashing. This told me I was starting to run out of clean power. It still sounded great, no distortion to my ears, but this sort of bothered me. I would feel better with a little more headroom. Well, I traded it in for a MC312 (300 wpc with a 2.7dB headroom). Problem solved. I think better to have too much and not worry about it.

@roadcykler  the Gryphon amplifiers are high bias class  A/B amplifiers, they do not stay in class A up to 800 watts into 2ohm loads they slide into class A/B. You would need a standing bias current of over 14 amps to accomplish this, it would draw about 3400 watts from the wall plug.

I had a pair of Totem Mani ii’s 20 years ago and the best they sounded is when i had them paired up with 1000 watt McIntosh monoblock amps, sounded much better than pairing with the McIntosh 400 and 600 series amps or even the 200 watt Classe amp.

It’s more than just watts. Later on, i was using the Hegel H360 which had I think 250 watts and with my current speakers at the time sounded nice. Then I bought some larger speakers that should have sounded fine with 250 watts but the bass wasn’t what i liked. Bought a 250 watt separate amp and the speakers came to life. Now, this amp was 4x bigger than the Hegel and 3x heavier, but just sounds much better. I also used the top of the line Classe monoblocks which I would still have today if Classe wasn’t bouncing around being sold then being back online.