Too much power?

Good point. I think level of detail was lacking, but also with more power you feel the need to stress it. If you own a sports car in the city, perhaps it gets tiresome to stick to 30 mph?

Maybe. Looking at your system, assuming it is up to date, the Electrocompaniet 220 puts out 70 watts at 8 ohms, 120 at 4, into Maggie 1.7s. Seems like it might lack the depth needed for those speakers. Maggie owners, is this enough for mid-volume listening?

I hate audio shows. They all turn up the volume too loud because the next room is so loud and they realize everyone's ears are ringing so they have to turn it up to get through that.  Thus the audition means nothing to me.

You are listening at 70 dB, even with insensitive speakers, that's less than one watt.  So the question is, is the first watt from the other amp better than the first watt from your amp?  Probably not.  

I think you are experiencing just want they wanted you too--at excessive volume the dynamics stood out.

Jerry

I once heard two very similar Rowland amps playing in a system which had, I believe, power hungry Magnepan speakers.  One amp was rated at something like 50 watts and the other 200 watts (basically the same amp with a larger power supply and more output transistors).  I thought the 50 watt amp sounded better, and the dealer doing the demonstration agreed.  He suggested that having fewer transistors operating in parallel probably improved the sound and that the bigger amp would come into its own if we asked it to play more loudly (it was plenty loud for me when we did the demonstration).

70dB is really low, and you indeed have a totally different amp calculation than guys like me. When you’re regularly pushing well into the 90s, then powerful amps and efficient speakers become worth their weight in gold. The power factor between 70dB and 90dB is 100 times! That means 100 Watts to me is like 1 Watt for you. You should definitely subscribe to the "First Watt" philosophy.