Too much power?

Great points. Thanks. I also needed to update my system in the forum. It’s all EC from dac to preamp, and yes, @ghdprentice I changed the preamp from Freya+ to EC and was very impactful. My amp seems plenty able to drive the Maggie’s loud, I just find the need to do that less necessary, mainly because of the bass impact from EC seems very effective at delivering current. >70 amps rating. I looked, the 180 monoblocks I tried have >100 amps and I looked up Parasound flagship >140 amps. I suppose even at 1 watt that this current or push has some positive effects, but it done any seem at my preferred listing level moving to the more powerful amps would accomplish much except draining my bank account. As @tomcarr said, enjoy and stop the FOMO. 

All else being equal a more powerful amplifier provides:

The ability to play music at louder levels without losing response linearity or introducing clipping and strain distortion.  

The ability to maintain relative volume level going from a smaller room to a larger room and a greater distance from the listening position.

The ability to maintain a relative volume level and dynamic headroom going to a speaker with less efficiency and more difficult to drive.

The ability to provide more relative volume and dynamic headroom (ability to be heard above louder levels of room background noise and din).

The maggie 1.7 is a fine speaker, but you need at least 150 watts to drive them to their potential.  I moved up to the 3.7's and they sound better with 250 watts.

It's true, many home listening is at an average 1w with mid-sensitivity speakers in a medium-small room at 70SPL.  And listening to level-compressed popular music requires an instantaneous headroom of between 3 and 10dB, which is 2w to 10w max without clipping of peaks.  However the headroom of 20dB of acoustic music (orchestral, jazz) and movies peak at 100w.  Double or half that peak wattage for speakers that range from +3 to -3dB of typical sensitivity.

@dbakker  that’s an interesting observation. I was recently at a chamber orchestra concert playing in an exquisite hall. 4th row. All I could think is that this would sound better as a recording where I could turn it up! It was in the 70db peak region (I checked) I enjoyed it but how anyone in the 50th row would hear the piano (well it was a harpsichord )I have no idea. So how do you assume there’s some specific volume appropriate to any recording? If you want to study this you’ll find masterers really have no idea, and are currently being policed by streaming services that now stress dynamic range over sheer loudness as has been the norm for 50 years, but that could be a different topic.