More Power is always good?


Hi all,

I'm a little lost in my search for the amp. Does more power (like more than 100W) means good?

I have been around listening to various amps, maybe a little too much that confused me.

Say for a room of 16ft by 20ft. What is the optimum power requirement?

For example, once I heard the Sugden A21Se (Class A 30W) driving the Spendor S6E, everything was nice except that I found that the basss definition and extension is lacking which is a concern to me, the showroom was smaller than my room. That's why I'm looking for amp with more power (like 100W), am I wrong? Will Class A amp like Sugden MasterClass or Accuphase E530 or Lavardin or others similar amp with power rating of 30W-50W be sufficient?

by the way I am using the old SF Grand Piano Home. I'm looking for a good amp that will outlast the GP Home, i.e. I don't have to change amp when i change the GP Home.

Any comments?

Thank you.
pingpong

I like the car engine analogy.
The Sugden Class A watts are more comparable to a 6 cylinder Porsche.
More sophiscated, better at braking, cornering with wicked acceleration.
Better than the huge V8.
I think Krell Man makes a good point. You may not need the extra power, but once you become accustomed to what more power can do for you at all levels it becomes hard to go back to lower powered amps. The kind and amount of power you feed to your speakers to a huge extent determines how well they will do with their dynamic ability, and dynamic ability is probably the biggest factor in mimicking live sound.
Eljif makes the right point. It's the dynamics that need alot of power and once you listen through having adequate power you'll never go back.
I disagree big-time with the Ian Masters article linked above, and not just
because he disses tubes. In some 50 years of serious listening I have come
to find that power output wattage, per se, is almost meaningless. No, you
can't run a Wilson speaker with a 3-watt SET amp. But the quality of the first
and subsequent watts is far more important than their quantity. I was
astonished when a friend who designs and builds SET amps brought over a 6
wpc amp that not only drove my ProAc speakers as well as the 140 wpc amps
I had been using, but sounded a bunch better. I'm now using a pair of 12
wpc SET monoblocks (same designer) to drive Gallo Reference 3 speakers in
an 18 x 40' room, with an "L" off the 40' length, and have never
come close to running out of steam and sound glorious. Yes, I'm powering
the Ref 3s' second voice coils with a powerful SS subwoofer amp, but half the
time I forget to turn it on.

Bottom line: forget the output wattage specs. Listen.

Good luck, Dave

PS- A good friend has your speakers. He drives them VERY successfully, in a
large room, with a 22 wpc tube amp.
More power is NOT always good.

If the first watt doesn't sound fabulous, why would you want more?