does more power=better quality ?

It seems to me that "low Powered amps" bring certain advantages to the party that allow them to be driven nearer an amps power limits and into areas of higher distortion

That's a statistical conclusion rather than a fact of life: it's very difficult and copious and much more expensive to produce MANY outstanding watts.
1) Very good amplifying devices (like the 845 tube or the 300, etc) only offer a few db's of gain. More gain increases the complexity manifold... bipolar transistors and Jfets can be good too, but if you want many class A watts, you'll probably end up with mosfets... SO, there's a good choice of devices offering a few excellent watts for less than the price of a new house -- but very few giga watt equivalents (for less than the price of a new house).

2) It makes more practical sense to choose a very sensitive speaker since there is lots of choice out there, and the price levels are comparable to their insensitive brethren.

3) Many tube designs offer their best performance at 1-3W. Many ss devices offfer their best performance level at full power.

When someone says "It makes more practical sense to choose...", what they really are saying is "It makes more practical sense to ME to choose..."

In a perfect audiophile world I actually would agree that high sensitivity speakers are the way to go, but in the real world there are limitations with that approach. For a wide variety of reasons, some logical and some not, there is a limited availability of practical high sensitivity speakers. By practical I mean reasonably full bandwidth (40Hz-20kHz), capable of at least 100dB playback and are not overly large, at least by audiophile standards. Such speakers are available, but it's not as if you can walk into the average hi-end retail store and find one.

For better or for worse the marketplace is dominated with medium sensitivity speakers and 30 to 100 watt amplifiers. Such systems are capable of truly excellent performance. As you move out of the audiophile mainstream you will encounter problems -- availability, cost, limited choices, more critical system matching, less trouble shooting support, etc. For any given person overcoming these "problems" may well be worth the effort, but not all people would agree.

Gregm, "ss devices offer their best performance level at full power". Where does that come from?

Onhwy61:
SS devices: the circuit design.

As to my use of practicality, I do agree. What I should have written is something like, "if *I* were taking the route of outstanding amplification, it would make better financial sense to opt for a few watts and a sensitive speaker.." or s/thing like that.
Thanks!

i guess all those brilliant audio guys who strolled out of m.i.t. and changed the way the world listened to all prerecorded music must have actually been minions of satan. burn all the books and smash all amplification rated over 3 watts. all loudspeakers must adhere to the one driver rule and 'famous blue raincoat' is now sanctioned by the 'church of the para hi-end' to be officially the coolest record ever.