Hooked up an old realistic power meter

Your meter is probably reasonably close to correct. :)

You really don’t need a big amp unless your speakers are hard to drive, and you don’t need watts so much as current.

Current sometimes, and often not, comes with bigger amps.

You might want to look at an online power / dB calculator. For 10dB louder you need 10x more power, so to go from 87 to 97 you would need 10 watts, from 97 to 107 you’d need 100.

Of course it is important to note that those meters are slow responding.  Instantaneous transients will peak at higher outputs. 

My speakers are PMC and always read that they are hard to drive and need lot's of juice but am now rethinking it. All my amps are getting really up there age wise and have been looking at replacing the main one just to be spending some of the grandkids money and something to look forward to. lol

At this age I don't have a lot I enjoy but have always had a great love for listening to music and buying all kinds of different equipment.

@norton

Your findings aren’t that surprising to me. I do believe that the often stated need for reasonable amplifier “headroom “ is logical but can be overstated. I find myself generally in the same camp as @carlsbad2 . If possible borrow a high quality modest power rated amplifier (Tube or transistor) and compare with your current amplifiers. Could be a case of quality amplifier wins out versus the quantity of available/stated watts.

Charles

I was always amazed when I got my Macintosh amps $100,000 and I could watch the meters. Most times I am listening at half of watt. When I really wanna listen it’s pushing 6 W the biggest transient I’ve ever seen made the meter go up to approximately 600 W. I also asked myself the same question.

Totally believable and consistent with my experience.  I've gone from 255 wpc to 12wpc, and get much better sound from a better sounding amp.  If that first 1/4 watt is good, the system should sound good.