Hi Scott22! Will low power damage your speakers? You do turn the system off at some point in the day, right? Everybody needs to sleep sometimes. Do you worry if your speakers are safe while the system is off? Of course, not! Low power is only a problem if you are trying to play your music louder than the amp can comfortably provide. If you ask it to provide 150 watts, and it can only do 70, it will distort badly. The music will sound bad, grimy or grainy, obviously nasty; that should alert you that there is a problem. But very few civilized people run over 20 watts on a regular basis. Under 5 watts is normal, even with less sensitive speakers.
You will get all sorts of advice (but you asked for it) on this topic. I have driven Magnepan 1.7i speakers with 9 watt Class Amps and had perfectly lovely music. Could they have played much louder, probably not; but, I didn't ask them to. You will notice that amps are rated for so much power at a certain level of distortion: 9 watts at 10% distortion, 200 watts at 1% distortion, etc. Notice that tube amps are often rated at higher distortion levels than solid state amps. Curious, eh? All this means is that all amps can produce more power that they are rated for, but they won't sound good doing it. You have heard PA amps produce ear splitting howls or buzzes when something went wrong, right? When that kind of thing happens, the tops and bottoms of the amps output flatten off when the amp produces all the power it can. They "max out." The sharp edges of the "clipped" output are full of high frequency energy that can burn out tweeters and even melt the glue that holds the voice coil onto the speaker's inner works. But this never happens under normal listening conditions. If your system sounds wonderful, plays loudly enough, and you are happy and don't need to entertain the entire neighborhood - just sit back and enjoy the music. There are people in the world who insist that toilet paper must be folded just so in order to clean properly. Smile politely at them, thanks them for their advice and do not invite them to dinner. Keep Smiling.
You will get all sorts of advice (but you asked for it) on this topic. I have driven Magnepan 1.7i speakers with 9 watt Class Amps and had perfectly lovely music. Could they have played much louder, probably not; but, I didn't ask them to. You will notice that amps are rated for so much power at a certain level of distortion: 9 watts at 10% distortion, 200 watts at 1% distortion, etc. Notice that tube amps are often rated at higher distortion levels than solid state amps. Curious, eh? All this means is that all amps can produce more power that they are rated for, but they won't sound good doing it. You have heard PA amps produce ear splitting howls or buzzes when something went wrong, right? When that kind of thing happens, the tops and bottoms of the amps output flatten off when the amp produces all the power it can. They "max out." The sharp edges of the "clipped" output are full of high frequency energy that can burn out tweeters and even melt the glue that holds the voice coil onto the speaker's inner works. But this never happens under normal listening conditions. If your system sounds wonderful, plays loudly enough, and you are happy and don't need to entertain the entire neighborhood - just sit back and enjoy the music. There are people in the world who insist that toilet paper must be folded just so in order to clean properly. Smile politely at them, thanks them for their advice and do not invite them to dinner. Keep Smiling.