How many watts per channel are enough?

It is hard to tell without having experience with the amps

the reason I say this is because I once had a Stingray amp (rated at 40 watts) and it was quite lively driving my Maggie 1.6 speakers however, Rogue 120M (120 watts) sounded a bit dull and lacking dynamic range. Both had new tubes.

maybe the archives have more info on the ability for each amp to drive a real life load.

fwiw

good luck

Agree with Liz. You've got a nice sized room. I'd be looking for 50 to 75 tube watts at the very minimum. I think a good rule of thumb with amps is to err on the high side. Of course, I'm not talking about 400 wpc mono-blocks. But in your case, I advise erring on the side of more watts.

Btw, I listen to classical music too. Just listened to Beethoven's 9th. Before that, Prokofiev's Symp #1. The drums rolls are really dynamic. I think a 34 wpc amp will run out of runway real fast trying to keep up.

I use the PL 5 with Opera Platea floorstanders (86 db sensitivity) in a 26' x 15' X 9' room. I use either EL 34 or 6CA7 tubes, which give you a few less wpc than if you use KT88s. I listen to CDs almost exclusively. The front end is a Musical Fidelity CD PRE 24 cd/ preamp.

It comes down to four items to consider:

1. how loud you play your stereo
2. what types of music you listen to
3. how noisy is the street you live on
4. do you live in a private house or an apartment house

I live in NYC (Queens) in an apartment house on a major road which connects to the LIE and supports a major bus route and a fire house.

With all that said, the PL5 will play plenty loud if you listen at low to moderate levels. If you like your music loud, you are probably looking at a solid state amp or a more expensive (and powerful) tube amp.

Rich

I have to disagree with some of the other posters. You should have no problem at all driving your speakers with either of the 2 amps you list. Your speakers are not that difficult a load. Also, you really can't rely on watts as a measure of how powerful the amp is. There is no common standard that equipment makers use for their ratings. They all do it their own way. For example, if you took ten 100 wpc at 8 ohm amps from ten different manufacturers and tested them all the same way, every single amp would put out a different amount of watts.

Zd542, legally they would all be required to put out at least 100 Watts. I agree that 89 dB isn't that inefficient, but 39 Watts is really on the low side for a room of that size.