Speaker wants 100 watt RMS. Is 40 watt tube OK?

I have seen speakers being driven with too much power, as well, causing destruction to the drivers, and sometimes, crossovers. Lets keep in mind, that the volume control setting on a preamp, does not determine the wattage used, of a connected amp. Many factors in determining proper power. Speakers being used ( size, relative to room, sensitivity, and impedance ); room size ( distance between listener and the speakers ); specific music being listened to ( a single cello and violin duo, or a full, grand orchestra, consisting of canon shots, just as examples ); maximum volume desired by listener; room acoustics ( too much furniture, over damped room ); voltage of source, feeding the amplifier; how isolated is the room, from extraneous sounds and noises. Tubes vs solid state, as speaker amplification.....I will stay out of it, because I favor good quality ss....

onhwy61  said: "If the loudspeakers are 87db sensitive -  Monitor Audio loudspeaker is a 4 ohm load." 

That is not correct the speakers are 90db and a 8 ohm load, 40 tube watts per channel should be plenty if not in a large room or at head banger volume.

Lot's of good info in the responses.  As a tube amp designer my 2 cents worth is that no mention of power supplies yet--and that is also a very key factor.  An excellent choke driven power supply can deliver instantaneous power which can be much more important than total RMS power.  Every amp is different and a 10W tube amp might outperform a 100SS amp, or the reverse depending on the total design.  

I once built a custom guitar amp for lead jazz guitarist which could only deliver 4-5 watts of continuous RMS power.  However, due to the design, it outperformed a 25 watt Fender amp and became his favorite gig amp.

try it and let your ears be the judge  

What a great thread this is! Lots of well-written, clear information.

My suggestion to the OP is to read Roger Sanders excellent white paper titled something like "tubes vs transistors". IMHO the information he shares will also help illuminate the topic under discussion.

Is there some law of physics I missed in school? This may be sorta true in some cases, with some amps but it's far from a universal conversion factor. I can think of many circumstances with my own gear collection where this is absolutely not true.

The missing bit is distortion. The reason the tube amp can seem to play louder than its watts suggest is that they have much smoother clipping character- rounding the output waveform when clipping rather than chopping it off as a solid state amp will do. So you may not hear the clipping at first but with a solid state amp you will.

As the tube amp approaches clipping it will generate more higher ordered harmonics. Since the ear uses these harmonics to sense sound pressure, it will sound louder at that point but a sound pressure meter will reveal what is really going on.