OP, you ask logical enough questions. Except it doesn’t exactly work quite the way you think.
There’s two main ideas behind power supplies. The first one is the one people tend to get fixated on, power. To a certain extent this does work. Amps with big power supplies probably do tend to have better bass and slam and things you would expect to hear from a more powerful amp. I say "probably do tend" because there’s a lot more to it and no shortage of 30 watt tube amps that have more authority and control than 200 watt amps with monster power supplies. Hardly ever helps to focus too much on any one thing.
The other main reason is ripple. Not just with amps but with all components its vitally important to have a nice smooth steady supply of DC power. DC comes from running AC through rectifier diodes. These diodes don’t ever output nice smooth DC. They always have some spikes or ripple in their output. The idea is we use this ripply DC to fill the filter caps which then let out nice smooth DC. The water in a dam metaphor.
Which kinda sorta works. Problem being there are no caps that do this perfectly. This is why you see all these guys asking which caps to use to get what kind of sound in their crossovers, etc. No cap is perfect. They all have some kind of sonic signature.
Put it all together and you can see the way you’re looking at it is pretty much meaningless. First off since no caps are perfect the diodes have as much influence on the sound as the caps. Since ripple matters and ripple is minuscule compared to power then total capacitance hardly matters either. This is why you sometimes will find a tiny little high quality cap in there. The idea is the big caps provide the oomph, the tiny one smooths out the ripple.
Main thing to learn from all this: Its the sum total quality of the whole package that matters. Which you can only evaluate by listening.
The difference by the way with better caps and diodes is a deeper and much more focused image, with less grain and glare, greater resolution of subtle dynamic shadings, and a lowering of the noise floor that leads to a sense of greater power. Even though power as measured by standard measurements is the same.
There’s two main ideas behind power supplies. The first one is the one people tend to get fixated on, power. To a certain extent this does work. Amps with big power supplies probably do tend to have better bass and slam and things you would expect to hear from a more powerful amp. I say "probably do tend" because there’s a lot more to it and no shortage of 30 watt tube amps that have more authority and control than 200 watt amps with monster power supplies. Hardly ever helps to focus too much on any one thing.
The other main reason is ripple. Not just with amps but with all components its vitally important to have a nice smooth steady supply of DC power. DC comes from running AC through rectifier diodes. These diodes don’t ever output nice smooth DC. They always have some spikes or ripple in their output. The idea is we use this ripply DC to fill the filter caps which then let out nice smooth DC. The water in a dam metaphor.
Which kinda sorta works. Problem being there are no caps that do this perfectly. This is why you see all these guys asking which caps to use to get what kind of sound in their crossovers, etc. No cap is perfect. They all have some kind of sonic signature.
Put it all together and you can see the way you’re looking at it is pretty much meaningless. First off since no caps are perfect the diodes have as much influence on the sound as the caps. Since ripple matters and ripple is minuscule compared to power then total capacitance hardly matters either. This is why you sometimes will find a tiny little high quality cap in there. The idea is the big caps provide the oomph, the tiny one smooths out the ripple.
Main thing to learn from all this: Its the sum total quality of the whole package that matters. Which you can only evaluate by listening.
The difference by the way with better caps and diodes is a deeper and much more focused image, with less grain and glare, greater resolution of subtle dynamic shadings, and a lowering of the noise floor that leads to a sense of greater power. Even though power as measured by standard measurements is the same.