Is there such a thing as too much power?

@atmasphere 

You really nailed this question. It's all about matching amp to speaker efficiency. And amplifier has a sweet spot in it's distortion vs. power curve. 

I've got a 500 watt integrated amp (which I bought in 2015) that I now realize is totally unnecessary with my current speakers, which have 89db sensitivity. I'm probably only ever using 1 of those watts because I rarely listen over 90db in volume level. I'm looking into some 25-50 watt class A and tube amps to better match my speakers and on focus on quality watts, not quantity.

I thought I needed a lot of power for my Maggie 3.6's and had a 540 watt class D.  The room would shake and it was fun to show off but no way to listen to music that loud for long.  I have 60 watt Pass class A amps with powered subwoofers.   Much more musical, I don't need to make the room shake any more so there is plenty of power for my listening levels.   There is enough power to make the Maggies come alive when I want to open them up for a short while and the inner detail and blackness of the background is really appreciated with the Pass amps.  And I have found that the pre-amp makes a bigger impact on the quality of sound at higher levels than the amplifiers.  A big amp makes a noisy pre amp sound more noisy especially when it is driven.

So, at least for the 2 manufacturers above, higher power is possible & better :-) It is only the cost that will be the negative aspect.

From a designer/manufacturing/engineering point of view I can tell you that this is simply incorrect. Its much easier to build a low power amp than a large one, and even though in a larger amp you can have the advantage of paralleled devices to minimize individual device aberrations, the simple fact is that the added complexity is a **frequent** downfall!

I've also mentioned several times on this thread one of the peskier issues dealing with the myth of more power which is outlined in @pragmasi  and @shahram 's posts above. If the amp is always operating ***below*** its minimum distortion level, you won't be hearing the best out of the amp or the speaker. For this reason the amplifier power has to be matched properly to the speaker efficiency such that the amplifier is doing its best work at normal listening levels. This isn't ideal but we live in a real world that does not care what we humans regard as ideal. So you have to be pragmatic and recognize that amps aren't perfect!

Now anyone whose read this far may have picked up on something- that in addition to a distinct advantage in terms of sound quality to matching the amp and speaker (a powerful amp working with a lower efficiency speaker and a higher efficiency speaker is better off with a lower powered amp), that also unlimited sound pressures are often not possible in many listening environments. Since thermal compression in loudspeakers is a very real thing, there is an obvious advantage to working with easier to drive speakers since they will play the dynamics in the recording better. At the same time because the amp isn't working as hard, it won't have to make as much distortion either.

IF the output of the higher efficiency speaker isn’t the cone flopping around out of phase, the cabinet adding it’s “ lone one note song “, breakup , etc

Louder ain’t always the truth