Is there such a thing as too much power?

I’ve never heard it, but it’s said, to reproduce the cannon shot in the 1812 Overture, an amp needs 700+ watts to reproduce it.

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say to reproduce a cannon shot you need a cannon- as otherwise in terms of power its logarithmic and you can forget 700 watts, as that is only a measly 3dB more than 350 watts. A gun shot is 140dB, a cannon certainly louder than that. But even 140dB, again, its a log scale. Say your speakers are 100 dB at 1 watt. 10 watts then is 110dB. To get to 120dB calls for 100 watts. You can see where this is going.... 130 dB, 1000 watts. 140dB 10k watts.

Again, that's a gun. Not a cannon. I've heard- felt- the cannon at Gettysburg. If that is the criterion having enough power is the least of your problems.

Underpowered amps /receivers,...are detrimental to tweeters and midrange.

 Having enough power, for crescendos, ending spikes, is a must.
 My speakers are rated a max of 250W peak I’m sure,
I use McCormack DNA-750s’ rated at about 650W @8 ohm, and a lot more into 4ohms!

 I learned my lesson long time ago, there is absolutely no substitute for having the headroom needed when you need it!

when you push the volume at times, you will need the power and headroom as to not send distortion to speakers, from overdriving a low watt amplifier into distortion.

been through more warranty situations anyone should go through, from lower watt amps.
 When I hit my first high powered amp,  no more blown tweeters/mids/woofers.

after I melted the binding,posts to red and black puddles of plastic from my onkyo m-504. At 165W @8 ohms,

I went to a pair of pro amps, Carvin dcm-2500’s in bridge mono, for the good price and watts.
  They were not reliable, but the first year, I never heard such effortless sound, peaks, airyness, it was an epiphany for me.

have never strayed from a minimum of 300W RMS, 
never an issue since.


Again:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sg14jNbBb-8
 

Okay,

One does need a lot of power to get to power levels so high as to melt binding posts.  If that is the requirement for a suitable listening level, get a very high-powered amp, because power is relatively cheap to attain, while high quality in other aspects is not so cheap.

I  don't listen at that kind of level and I don't include as a priority the capability to play at extreme levels; I insist on the system sounding dynamic and lively at modest listening levels.  It hardly matter what level the cannon shot in the 1812 Overture should be reproduced at--the dynamic range of the recording limits how loud it will be when the volume level of the rest of the piece is played at realistic levels.  

I found that interesting since I had read the output current of other brands of amplifiers. Not sure what to make of the lack of response.

Amplifier current ratings are among the most useless and misleading of specs, IMO. What they usually represent is how much current can be provided into a dead short (zero ohms) for some unspecified miniscule fraction of a second. And in some or many cases they represent what the amp’s power supply can provide for that miniscule fraction of a second, rather than what the amp’s outputs can provide.

See this thread: https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/current-limit-onset-definition?sort_order=asc

Regards,
-- Al

I learned my lesson long time ago, there is absolutely no substitute for having the headroom needed when you need it!

when you push the volume at times, you will need the power and headroom as to not send distortion to speakers, from overdriving a low watt amplifier into distortion.

been through more warranty situations anyone should go through, from lower watt amps.
When I hit my first high powered amp, no more blown tweeters/mids/woofers.

I don’t have the Telarc 1812 Overture, but I would expect it to be exceedingly rare for any recording of music to have a wider dynamic range than Stravinsky’s "Firebird Suite" on Telarc (Robert Shaw conducting the Atlanta Symphony) and Prokofiev’s "Romeo and Juliet" on Sheffield Lab (Erich Leinsdorf conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic).

I have observed the waveforms of those recordings on a computer, using a professional audio editing program, and found them to have a dynamic range (the difference in volume between the loudest notes and softest notes) of about 55 db, which is simply incredible. Correspondingly, at my 12 foot listening distance the softest notes are reproduced at SPL’s of about 50 db, and the loudest notes at about 105 db. My little Pass XA25, which after leaving class A can probably provide around 100 watts into the 6 ohm impedance of my speakers, has no trouble at all accomplishing that with zero evident distortion.  And likewise in the case of the 70 watt VAC Renaissance 70/70 MkIII I used previously.

My speakers are rated at 97.5 db/2.83 volts/1 meter/6 ohms. As with many such specs that rating might be a bit optimistic.

Regards,
-- Al