Too Much Power

I find that with many S.S. amps, the best sounding amps tend to be on the lower power side. Probably has something to do with the number of outputs and the complexity of the circuit. All things equal you can never have too much power just a case of how this extra power sounds and how it is created.

Thanks for all the comments thus far.

Any thoughts on Audio By Van Alstine DVA M225 mono amps? These are small, high power, appear to run relatively cool, yet class A/B...

They ever a showman Bob Carvar did a video once showed the power required to reproduce the sound of a pair of scissors doing one big snip. I think it was a short transient of 1,000 watts. Anything less clipped.

But that is the point of massive power… not in plying loud but delivering enormous current for short durations so not to compress the music. I have usually owned amps of twice the maximum power handling capability of my speakers. They always sounded better because of it. Typically with a real high current amp you have to turn the volume up less to sound satisfying.

All that extra power to prevent clipping is only useful if there are recordings that have a suitably wide dynamic range.  Absent such a large range, the average level would have to be incredibly high for that reserve to ever come into play on the peaks.  Even with notoriously inefficient and difficult to drive speakers, I would NEVER want the amp to actually deliver anything close to 900 or 1200 watts.  I cannot think of any amp over 100 watts that I thought compared favorably with low-powered amps when playing the vast majority of speakers at sensible power levels.  

Except perhaps for Quads, you never blow a speaker from power but rather from clipping. Check out the way tube and solid state amps clip and tell which type of clipping most would deem more tolerable.