Shocked. Need Opinions. How muck power do I need?

I think you hit the nail on the head, the issue for many speakers is not watts @ 8 Ohms, but current delivery.  It’s how well an amplifier does in the 3-4 Ohm range that’s important, especially with speakers with dual woofers as they tend to hit a low in the bass, as you point out.

Unless you are trying to shake the walls down 100W is often more than enough for most listeners.

A Luxman 509 or even a 507 for instance would probably be more than enough for you.

@erik_squires

+1

Current is the game, absolutely. But I would not start trying to find the minimum because as you already found the bass starts dropping off. Maybe in a quick listen that is ok… but it may not sounds as good at quieter levels. I would not go below 100 wpc and with solid state, more (of the same quality) generaly sounds better. Tubes are way different… much more flexible and not requiring as much power to sound good.

Brand is a personal preference. To me solid stat Luxman has accentuated treble and a bit extra bass and is attenuated in the midrange so is not that musical. It sound very “high end” and sparkly… and looks pretty. I would look at Pass, better balanced tonally, with good midrange and very musical for solid state. Ultimately your preference.

Many thanks. Good point about a quick listen vs living with it for a while and at low levels. 

I don't know your specific components, but, as a general matter, a lot of people can do with far less power than they think they need.  But, there is no reason to go lower and lower just for the sake of seeing how low you can go.  With solid state, you can achieve fairly high power levels without that much additional cost, so there is less of a reason to go very low in power unless you are taking a fundamentally different approach to design (e.g., First Watt, an offshoot of Pass Labs).

It is a different story if you are looking at tube amps.  With tube amps, there is quite a bit more variability in sound quality and achieving higher power often comes at a sonic price.  That is why low power makes more sense, if you can live with the lower maximum volume level.  Most of my favorite tube amps are under 8 watts, although there are some that I like that hit the heady rating of 100 watts per channel.

Remember, all things being equal, you need ten times the power to double the sound volume.