Watts! How many do we need?

@mlsstl  I'll be the first to admit how little I know about much of this hobby.  I believe what Sanders is trying to get across is the fact that many people are oblivious to the fact their amps may be clipping and are under powered, and that their system could sound even better with a higher powered amp?.  I suspect you don't need to be playing at excessive volume to be stressing an amp.  I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, that the load the speaker presents to the amps has a lot to do with it.  I owned a pair of Acoustic Zen Crescendo Mark ll.  When you look at the impedance graph, that speaker is almost a flat line at 6 ohms.  Extremely easy on your amp.  My current speakers are the opposite.  Dipping as low as 1 ohm which is a punishing load.  Luckily my amps are stable at 1 ohm.  In summary, I found the Sanders article very interesting and will assume he knows a lot more about this than I do. I don't think it ever hurts to read the lengthy papers written by the designers and builders.   Cheers, 

As I think I remember @ghdprentice  typing, I have also read that maybe not all watts are created equal.

👍 @immatthewj I did mention that and I think @curiousjim ’s dealer is trying to make Sonus Faber sound more like Wilson. I think he is trying to put so much fast current to them (and probably a lean midrange) to increase slam. These speakers are made to reproduce natural sounding music not to do shock and awe. I know it is hard to attribute intent to others. But I have heard SF with very high powered solid state amps, they do make them sound better to me.

@immatthewj   Actually, all watts are the same.  There's a scientific calculation that defines a watt.  It's all the other stuff that makes the difference.   

@bigtwin -- I appreciate your points, but high wattage alone doesn't tell you anything about how an amp behaves when presented with a low impedance load of 4 ohms or under.  And wattage also says nothing about the other elements of sound quality. 

Especially since I don't listen at high levels (85 dB tops) I happen to enjoy my 20 w/ch (8 ohms) Aegir more than the 150 w/ch VTV amp I had immediately prior.

To use a car analogy, it is like focusing only on horsepower while ignoring torque, gearing, suspension, handling, braking and so on. (Of course, the same as with audio buffs, there are some car enthusiasts that will focus only on one trait.)