I took a look at John Atkinson’s measurements of your speakers and at the description and specs of the GS150, and as far as I can tell from those documents the speakers and amp should be a fine pairing.
I assume that your preamp can provide balanced signals to the power amp, because like many ARC balanced power amp designs I’m pretty certain the GS150 will not work properly if provided with single-ended inputs via RCA-to-XLR adapters (or, for that matter, if the preamp provides single-ended signals via XLR connectors, although that would be unusual in a high quality design).
To address your initial question more generally, IMO using an amp that is more powerful than necessary can raise at least two concerns (although neither appears to be applicable in this case):
1)There tends to be a **loose** correlation between the power ratings and the gains of various amplifiers. If the overall combination of speaker sensitivity, amplifier gain, preamplifier gain, and source output level is too high, the volume control on the preamp may have to be used at very low settings, where various undesirable effects can occur.
2)Everything else being equal, more watts = more $. So with a higher powered amplifier a greater percentage of the dollars one chooses to spend may go toward power rather than quality, compared to spending the same number of dollars on a lower powered amplifier. Assuming at least that the topologies and class of operation (A, AB, or D) are similar between the amps that are being compared.
Good luck. Regards,
-- Al
I assume that your preamp can provide balanced signals to the power amp, because like many ARC balanced power amp designs I’m pretty certain the GS150 will not work properly if provided with single-ended inputs via RCA-to-XLR adapters (or, for that matter, if the preamp provides single-ended signals via XLR connectors, although that would be unusual in a high quality design).
To address your initial question more generally, IMO using an amp that is more powerful than necessary can raise at least two concerns (although neither appears to be applicable in this case):
1)There tends to be a **loose** correlation between the power ratings and the gains of various amplifiers. If the overall combination of speaker sensitivity, amplifier gain, preamplifier gain, and source output level is too high, the volume control on the preamp may have to be used at very low settings, where various undesirable effects can occur.
2)Everything else being equal, more watts = more $. So with a higher powered amplifier a greater percentage of the dollars one chooses to spend may go toward power rather than quality, compared to spending the same number of dollars on a lower powered amplifier. Assuming at least that the topologies and class of operation (A, AB, or D) are similar between the amps that are being compared.
Good luck. Regards,
-- Al